It Could Happen Here Weekly 57

All of this week's episodes of It Could Happen Here put together in one large file.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, everybody, Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let
you know this is a compilation episode. So every episode
of the week that just happened is here in one
convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to
listen to in a long stretch if you want. If
you've been listening to the episodes every day this week,
there's gonna be nothing new here for you. But you
can make your own decisions. So look, I ain't gonna

(00:22):
hold you. I was not going to cover this because
I feel like there's somebody needs to be discussed at
the Domino table to cook out, you know, and I
just don't want to feed the machine. But at some
point we got to decide whose man is this? And
somebody got come come get their boy yee. We got
to decide, okay, when when did he cross the line? Y'all?

(00:44):
And has he crossed the line? Because you know, the
important nuance it this is how we've survived is collective,
you know, slaves like the you know, we we needed
each other to survive. So when somebody got out of line,
we looked out for each other. You know. I don't
know if you know this, but corn rows like the
braids inside of people's hair were maps. You know, the

(01:09):
Negro spirituals you you you sang songs. It's code for
when it was time to go. Harriet Tubman when she
got free, you know, she escaped herself and then decided
I'm gonna go back and get as many people as
I can, Like this is, this is our story. We
take care of each other. So that's why it's hard
for us to just write people off to just cancer,
especially if they're black. It's hard for us because it's like,

(01:29):
we need to take care of each other. We can't
let these white people like tell us what to do
with our volts. But that being said, at some point
we're like, all right, nigga, you are on your own.
You have hurt us too much and I never so
I didn't want to cover yeah, because I still don't
know how I feel. There are some statements that he
said are obviously inexcusable, but I just didn't want to

(01:52):
be a part of that. I want to be a
part of that conversation the Kanye stands and I'm done
with East people. I just don't want to be a
part of conversation. What Sophie hit me and the good
folks that it could happen here. Hit and was like, yo, uh,
we got to talk about this, and I was like,
all right, I was on the fence. We need to
talk about it. Yo. Whose man's is this y'all? Somebody

(02:13):
can get the boy. So it's a crossover with the
Helmy Garrison Robert and it could happen here. Teams, Sharine
and we discussed this stuff. So dropping into our feed
and they feed it could happen here. For politics, that's rock.

(02:36):
I'm just waiting for Kanye's gnostic phase. That a good
develop good as soon as it starts being let start
talking about Sophia and I'm excited for when he runs
for a president uh and then declares his opponent to
be we We're on the same track there. It's gonna

(03:03):
be a good day. Welcome to It can happen here.
In the podcast, when are we talking about Kanye West's
inevitable war against the demi urge? Oh uh? We joined
again by Shrine and prop So we just talked about
kind of Kanye West history up towards his most recent

(03:25):
White Lives Matter T shirts done and his anti Semitic
posts on Instagram and Twitter dot com and my main
interest in the aftermath of these statements is kind of
mostly how right wing media reacted to what was going
on in to one of their darling's kind of saying
some questionable things, and what that might tell us about
how they'll handle overt anti semitism and fascistic um kind

(03:48):
of consumerism in the future. I'm going to do a
quote from New Republic again about what happened in the
direct aftermath of of Kanye West's post quote. Fox News
meanwhile posted an article that West merely had been locked
out of his account due to an unspecific violation of
the company's policies. After spending such a fulesome number of

(04:11):
hours providing him with a platform for his White Lives
Matter stunt, The network a shewed coverage of his anti semitism,
other than to point to it as the product of
mental illness. The effort to sweep the second round of
nasty bigotry under the rug after celebrating the initial outpouring
is breathtakingly cynical, but not particularly surprising. The fact that

(04:33):
West was at least for now d platformed from social
media accounts that he was using to traffic hate speech
is in itself catnip for far right figures and unquote
so many a far right rifter has tried to turn
this into a free speech issue. Um. However, Kanye associate
and Fashion Week White Lives Matter buddy Candace Owens tried

(04:57):
to deny the anti semitism all together. Within days of
his Twitter rant. Canada, Owens on her Daily Wire podcast
was defending Kanye, saying quote death Con three should be
interpreted as a move to protect the Jewish people after all,

(05:17):
because because because def con is a defensive military category,
not an offensive military category. See, these are the words
of a deeply un serious person. Exactly, I'll be in
a very a very dangerous one, but deeply on serious.
This is that's this is. It's those things. Okay, be conservative,

(05:41):
I think, however you want. But it's that stuff that
is so infuriating to me where I'm like, you know,
you do not sit across the table from me, you know,
you know, and it's like, okay, just I just like
break character once, you know, just just like no, what

(06:06):
is you like, There's no way I can't take you.
There's no way you believe that, There's no way. Canderth
has been playing the long game for a while, and
that kind of reach that that reaches a culmination towards
the end of this episode, which we'll talk about um,
but let's let's let's let's play the clip there, because
she also does some pretty gross anti semitic kind of

(06:27):
defensive stuff as well, talking about how you can't say
the word Jewish without people getting upset. If you are
an honest person, you did not think this tweet was
anti semitic. You did not think that he wrote this
tweek because he hates or wants to genocide Jewish people.
This is not represent at the beginning of the Holocaust.
That's if you're an honest person, you'll meet that. You'll
admit that right. If you're an honest person, when you

(06:49):
read this tweet, you had no idea what the hell
he was talking about. I had I had no idea
when I read this tweet what the hell he was
talking about. The tweet inspired questions, not answers. First and foremost,
what is death Con three? Did he mean deaf Con three,
which would be a military defense position, not to an offense,

(07:12):
for those of you that are offended, a military defense position.
Is he tweeting this because he's reading the Newsweek headline
calling him an anti Semitic. Is he angry because he
can't believe that he's not free to talk about people
in his life who happened to be Jewish right without
being accused of anti Semitism. Is he's saying, I'm not
gonna shut up, and I'm gonna keep tweeting, and I'm

(07:33):
gonna keep calling these people out, referring to his friends
that he feels slided by, as he talking about Jared
Kushner and Josh Krishner. If you're a liar, you'll say,
I know I was scared. Canis I actually thought that
Kanye West was going to launch a military strike in Israel?
Because that's the reaction, Like when I woke up and
I looked at the headlines, of reaction was like Kanye

(07:54):
West had gotten together a military strike and it was
going to go forward in the morning time in Israel.
That was That was the reaction that was met with
this Sweek. Now, once again, I want to make this
very clear. This is not a defensive tweet. This is
an open question which never seems to happen anymore. It's

(08:15):
like you cannot even say the war Jewish without people
getting upsets in the same way that you're not allowed
to say black anymore. So there is definitely a lot
in that clip. Um. I guess first off, we can
talk about talking about the tweet as simply asking questions
about Jewish people. It's like you're just like directly doing

(08:38):
the Jewish question, Like what you can't frame this just
ask like you're just asking questions about Jewish people. Really,
and then and then Owens tries to link this to
like a Zionist position, implying that attacks on Jewish people
and anti Semitism are only legitimate if they're they're in
the form of a military act against the nation of Israel,

(09:02):
which is not how anti Sumitism operates. That's like, that's
just that's just that's just not what that is like
that it's it's it's pretty gross again. Just it's it's
the same daily wire racism denying stick by you know,
it's it's it's the same thing they do by saying
racism doesn't exist anymore because they're not racist laws in America,

(09:22):
which first of all isn't even true. But second of all,
that's not what racism is like that that that even
if there weren't racist laws. That doesn't mean there's no racism.
Um man, she like the man. It's like like I'm
trying to put my words together because there's a certain

(09:43):
type of like sinisterness. Yeah, it's a type of yeah,
it's about they're both deeply un serious. But it's also
like explicitly complicit in the in the like the rise
of far right Christian fascism, like it's it's it's so absurd,
but in a very dark way like it's it's it's yeah,

(10:04):
I heard Kanye this morning. This is what days this
October October, a clip from Pierce Morgan no less, like
trying to call him on his anti semitism and yeah,
just like I know we're talking about Candice, but it's
like it's in the same vein of like ain't no
way you believe it is? Is in in that he

(10:27):
was like, listen, I apologize. I was talking about my
experience in the music industry, which is a verifiable fact
ran by Jews, And I was like, you can bro
you ain't no way, ain't no way, and just character
like Alex Jones broke character before, like uh, what's tuck across?

(10:52):
In both character Tuck across in in court was like
this entertainment, don't take me serious, you know, just like
let me have that moment where I'm like, Okay, at
least be honest with what I'm dealing with here, Just
break character one like this. Just give me that at
least I know what I'm dealing with. No, Yeah, like
saying this is an open question. You cannot say the

(11:13):
word Jewish that people are getting upset, like you know
what you're doing, and with the with the after the
like death calm. Three tweets follow up implying that Jewish
people emitted cancel culture, like Robert said, directly referenced that
that's that is just directly ripped from like Nazi theory.
Um like it's it's it's so blatant. Like even even

(11:35):
Cannice Owens's boss Ben Shapiro had to acknowledge that Kanye's
tweets were anti Semitic. He he made He made a
tweet saying back from the Jewish Holiday now, which don't
like Ben Shapiro, I know what you're doing. I know
what you're calling it to the Jewish holiday. Fuck you

(11:55):
back from the Jewish Holiday now. As usual, two things
can be true at once. Kanye's moves towards pro life
faith and family conservatism are encouraging his death. Com three
posts and black Hebrew is Alite language are clearly anti
Semitic and disturbing. It's like Ben Shapiro, like, the more

(12:16):
this is, this is, this is this. This is basically
Ben Shapiro saying the more he agrees with me, the
more he becomes a Nazi. But I'm sure this is
just a coincidence, which which I did steal from. I
did steal that from someone on Twitter. So well, thanks, um, well,
thanks gonna be true. Look, look, both things, bothings gonna

(12:37):
be Let's say that you all right, Um, I'm gonna
do it. I'm gonna do a brief tangent on this
guy named Jason Woodlock. So Woodlock is a sports journalist
and podcaster who hosts the show Fearless Soldiers on Glenn
Beck's Blaze Media, where he quote protects the realm of
common sense and challenges the group think Mandy did by

(13:00):
elites um and he has like over half a million
followers on Twitter dot com. He made a series of
not great statements that are still up and went extremely
viral with a lot of likes. Um saying, quote Kanye
West and Dave Chappelle, is there a pattern the industry
wants both of them canceled. Black raffers and comedians are

(13:23):
free to denigrate black people and white men a million
different ways, but there's a line they better not cross,
and everyone knows it. I wonder, I wonder what he's saying.
I wonder what he's implying there. The conflation of this
is actually also as person a member of the black community,
car carrying that is that is frustrating in and that

(13:47):
we do need to talk about, you know, among ourselves,
like what is acceptable in terms of how we speak
about our own women, how we speak about you know,
our little brothers and sisters in the world. That is
something that needs to be discussed. But you don't get
to call it at you know. So Jason Jason is black,

(14:08):
but he similarly works for a far right media company. UM,
I'm gonna give you. I'm gonna give you a phrase
and you could use this later. Okay. I'm pretty sure
Serene knows it too. It's all scan folk and kim folk.
So just go ahead continue. And what he's talking about here,
saying that there's there's there's a you're you're free to

(14:28):
you know, talk about you know, bad things that black
people and white people have done. The line that you
better not cross. He's he's obviously talking about Jewish people. Um,
someone some of someone asking him, hey, what's what is
this line? And then Jason posted, you can't question black
entertainers unhealthy relationship with non religious Jewish power brokers in Hollywood.

(14:52):
Yeah okay, yeah uh he this this was obviously called
out as being extremely anti Semitic, which then he replied,
you think I have a problem with people who speak
a Semitic language. Not true. I have a problem with
the secular culture, particularly Hollywood's promotion of it and black

(15:12):
celebrities embrace of it. I believe those celebs have an
unhealthy partnership with non religious Jewish people. He chose which
words that was a dance again, this is this is
just exactly, you're just doing anti semitism like you can't,
you can't like it's not about speaking a Semitic language,
and you know that, like you know this, you're you're

(15:33):
you're just doing a bit like here and here's what's crazy,
Like you know, in in my early days, of like
moving into more like activist kind of justice circles and
and for real, like even in some of the like
church spaces I was in because again I grew up
in like a very different church tradition. And the rest
of these foods is that the Jewish community was in

(16:00):
a lot of ways upheld as an example for us
in that like, look, they don't let nobody talk about nobody.
They don't let they don't they don't let it ride.
You're not allowed to talk to me. And they were like,
we need to be like that. They're like the way
that the way that like, look they come in they said,
if their community, they they keep their money within their community,

(16:22):
like their dollars circulated around that and when you look
at like statistics, they were saying among the black community,
it's like a dollar, you know, a dollar only circulates
once through our community, you know what I'm saying. And
like I don't have the numbers right, but they were saying,
like within the Jewish community, that dollar goes around like
fifty six seventy eight times because they support each other,
you know. And they were like that's something that as
black people, we need to start learning how to do,

(16:43):
like yo, stop being crabs in the bucket, like support
each other. You know what I'm saying, Man, learn from
their community, you know, learn from the fact that like
you know, they keep their narrative alive. They don't allow
oppression to happen to them. They they stuck together. How
they accrued wealth. You know what I'm saying. I don't
know how healthy this understanding is, but I'm saying that's
what we saw, Like look at how they accrued wealth,
like learned from them, you know. So so when it

(17:05):
when when you hear it coming out of a black
entertainer's mouth, something anti, it just it grates even more
because you just like, man, what like I think one
of the acts of that, which we're actually gonna get
to in a bit, is some of that kind of
admiration can be a double edged sword though it is.
That's what I'm saying, Like, I don't know how healthy

(17:25):
it is, Like that's what we were taught. Yeah, but
like like like what you said about like there you
know how a dollar circulates way more. You see Kanye
later starting to use some of that rhetoric in terms
of promoting Jewish people as like controllers of financial engineering,
like you see that type of you see that bridge.
We're gonna talk about that like in a sect. Also,

(17:47):
quick piece of history about Jewish Jewish people in banking,
which it's ill like they as a people got into that.
They were basically they were forced to because they weren't
allowed farm land, like you wasn't allowed to farm. So
they're like, well, we gotta find a job somehow, Let's
do banking. You imagine they're good at it, like you know,

(18:08):
I mean, I mean, like this is this part that's
like really can't. I'm like, you know, why do you
know why jazz exists? Segregation, naked racism, that's why blues,
Why is there hip hop? Because sep sect like we
did something with the trash you gave us, Like so
I think that, yeah, anyway, segregation made that happen. I'm

(18:30):
going to read a quote from Ya Rosenberg. Quote. Kane's
tweets exemplify why anti Semitism is so hard to uproot.
It's a self affirming conspiracy theory. The anti Semite claims
that Jews control everything. Then if they're penalized for their bigotry,
they point to that as proof heads they win, tails
Jews lose Kanye posted his second tweet before the First

(18:52):
World was taken down, perfectly demonstrating how the Jews control
everything is a preemptive anti Semitic defense against consequences for
expressing anti Semitism. It's a common misconception that anti Semitism
is just a personal prejudice against Jewish people. It's not.
It's also a conspiracy theory about how the entire world works,
which is why it ropes in conspiracy theorists from all

(19:14):
ideologies and all backgrounds. It creates this antagonizing catch twenty
two for Jews when confronted with anti semitism. If we
say nothing, the hatred spreads unchecked. If we say something
and it results in any consequences for the anti Semite,
the bigot just uses that as proof of their anti
Semitic world view. So that's a good kind of one

(19:35):
oh one explainer on how this kind of whole thing operates.
You know, talking about Jewish power brokers in Hollywood and
people called out on that, They're like, oh see, this
is an example of them trying to silence the truth.
And you know, all of this type of ship. Um.
The one super interesting thing that has happened since all

(19:56):
of these tweets and the aftermath and stuff has has
has happened is that we got some leaked video from
the Tucker Carlson and kan Gae video. So this is this, this,
this is this is fascinating. Um So Vice Vice's motherboard

(20:18):
obtained footage of Kanye making bigotings, statements about Jutish people,
and bizarre clams about fake children, as well as describing
visions of connecting of kinetic energy cities sent to him
by God. And uh, we're not sure how Vice got
these unaired clips, but we have them and they're extremely fascinating,

(20:41):
both on for like what Kanye is doing and how
he made these statements before his tweets. Um Also it's
interesting on like what Tucker is doing, like your explicitly
obfuscating direct anti Semitism but still allowing the dog whistles
to be to be present. Um So, inside there interview
that that did air, Carlson and Kanye together outlined some

(21:04):
of Fox's favorite boogeyman from the Clintons, COVID restrictions, cancel culture,
and liberal elites. But what Fox left on the cutting
room floor is just as revealing. The Tucker Carlson Tonight's
team decided to edit out a clip of Kanye saying
that he's vaccinated against COVID nineteen, which is you know, okay, yeah.

(21:24):
In a segment talking about black genocide and planned parenthood,
they edited out Kanye's statements about the lost twelve Tribes
of Judah. Planned parenthood was made by Margaret Sanger, a
known eugenics with the KKK two control the Jew population.

(21:44):
When I say ju, I mean the twelve Lost Tribes
of Judah, the Blood of Christ. Who the race the
people known as the race black really are? This is
who are people are the Blood of Christ? This as
a Chris sh is my belief. So inside the television
broadcast it has it has those parts about planned parenthood

(22:07):
and the KKK, but then after he mentions the KKK,
it cuts three seconds ahead, so it skips over all
that stuff around Jews and the the lost twelve Tribes
of Judah, which kind of get that that is that
is some of the type of black Hebrew Israel stuff
that Robert and prop were talking about in the previous episode.
How they're they're one of the lost tribes who went south. Um,

(22:30):
So that that is that, But it's interesting so like
he's directly talking about that way before his tweets that
Tucker just completely edited out now on the on the
planned parenthood point. So Sanger was indeed a racist and
you genicist um, a stance that the Planned Parenthood organization
has since like obviously denounced um. But you know, claims

(22:51):
about Planned Parenthood specifically operating to kill unborn black babies
are just common rhetoric in the pro life like circles
and conspiracy spaces. It's not that that part is not
really true, but it's a very common talking point that
Margaret Sanger point is is something that like, yeah, you know,

(23:11):
even I like in my sort of you know, evolution
of the way I think and feel and believe. You know,
I'm the child of a black panther, you know what
I'm saying. So like when you you you hear things
about eugenics and Margaret Sanger in a connection a plan
herod but and you're like, oh, well, yeah, no, that
stuff is evil, you know what I mean? UM, And

(23:32):
you know obviously I I'm a I'm assist gendered male,
you know. So there there's definitely holes in the story
of understanding the complications of what it means what abortion
and reproductive rights mean because I just I didn't know,
you know. And uh, but as you you know, grow mature,

(23:54):
travel for me, like the the biggest, the biggest change
in my thinking has been travel and relationships and just
you know what I used to say reading off the
naughty List, you know, uh, and you start understanding those complications.
But yeah, that was like that that Margaret Sanger note

(24:16):
is a note that's hit often, you know, and it
becomes very difficult until you're like, so you till you
until you in the situation, you know what I mean,
and like you are like, look, this is this is
this is affordable healthcare and it's right down the street,
you know. And when you're in that situation, it's like again,
like all the boogeyman's and all the stories and all

(24:37):
the warnings, all of it falls apart, you know, once
you actually see this stuff in practice. So yeah, that
but that that Margaret Sanger, well, I was a that's
a tough title swallow. And the Planned Parent Organization has
spent a long time trying to amend for their for
their like an initial inclination and some of the like
you genicists starting points that that they had and making

(24:58):
sure that they're not they're not you know, yeah, continuing
in that oh yeah, and like and like actually addressing like, hey,
is the locations of our clinics specifically geared towards like
being in more targeted communities where it's like lower class
and people of color as opposed to white, affluent communities,

(25:20):
and they have they have taken steps to actually like
make sure that they're planning of clinics and locations is
not it's not oversaturated in Yeah, and that being said,
I'm like a white communities, they got healthcare, So it's
like there's a different story, you know what I'm saying.
It's like, you go where it's needed. I'm like, I
ain't got no healthcare over here. That's why they here,
you know. I Mean, this isn't obviously, this isn't a

(25:41):
planned parenthood stand video or podcast. But at the same time,
I'm like, well, of course they got their problems, like
every other organization got their problems. But like the idea
that there's this like sinister plot, you know, is clearly
the rantings of someone who is not well. It does

(26:01):
it's it is parenting, just conspiracy talking points. At this point,
the way, the way he doesn't the way he's doing.
And in one of the more blatantly anti semitic sections
that were that was edited out, Kanye complains about Kwanza
being taught to his kids in school and and says
that he would prefer his kids learn Hanaka because it
comes with financial engineering. Was biting my tongue on my

(26:25):
political opinion because I thought it would be better for
my children. And now you look up and my kids
are going to a school that teaches black kids a
complicated Kwanza. I prefer my kids new Hanaka and Kuanza.
At least it will come with some financial engineering. I'm sorry,

(26:46):
what wait? I mean? This is? This is this type
of thing like you should learn from the Jews because
they're good at controlling money. Like yeah, it makes me
feel like he purposely tweeted that stuff because it was
cut out, like because like maybe ing his idea of
being I mean, I think I think he tweeted that
stuff out. He tweeted that he tweeted up on Twitter

(27:07):
in response to him getting banned on Instagram, and the
stuff on Instagram was directly against a rapper who was
calling him out on his ship um I don't know
if Kanye watched the Tucker Carlson interview. I don't know. UM.
And then in one of the more bizarre things that

(27:27):
he said, Kanye West talked about a so called fake
child that had been planted in his home, including he
went into explicit detail talking about the child's name and
the parents name and this this video clip was not
posted to protect the family's privacy. UM, but he went
into great detail. And we have some we have some

(27:47):
like transcripts saying, I actors, professional actors placed into my
house to sexualize my kids. He he he referred to
the so called son of an associate, seemingly implying that
the child was fake, saying that we we we we
did not believe that the person was her son because
he was way smarter than her. UM. And he it's

(28:11):
it's the This is like the most clear example of
the ramblings of someone who like isn't okay, Like it's
like like someone having a mental health episode like. Connie
has spoken frequently about living with bipolar disorder and experiencing
manic episodes. In twenty nineteen, he discussed how experiences these
with David Letterman, saying, quote, when you're in the state,

(28:32):
you're hyper parented about everything and everyone in my experience,
other people have different experiences. You know, everyone is now
an actor, Everything is now a conspiracy, uncut and this
is what's happening. You're thinking everyone's an actor and everyone's conspiracy.
You're really I mean, you can look at gang stocking,
which is probably an expression of people having schizophrenic episodes,

(28:54):
where people believe that like crowds of just random folks
on the street are like part of an organized stalking
thing or just there's these One kind of common thing
that happens in psychotic episodes for some people is a
belief that their loved ones, their spouse or whatever has
been replaced by someone who looks exactly the sin. There's
also certain kinds of like we call that damage. We

(29:15):
call that Nathan Fielder syndrome. I was going to say that,
but I didn't want to drag it to this. It's
I mean, it's one of those This is I don't
know how you actually would ever study this, but I
think one of the major problems are our civilization has
that might actually end us is the fact that every

(29:37):
mental illness on the planet is vastly exacerbated by the
person having a lot of money, which also happens to
make it virtually impossible to treat because no one around
you will admit that anything is wrong. And this again
might someday, combined with the fact that we have an
addiction on this planet to handing a single individual the
keys to a nuclear stockpile, this might all end in

(29:59):
really badly for everybody. And when you're one of those
famous people in the world, you constantly feel like you're
being gang stocked because you are like everyone watching you,
like every like it's it's not humans weren't designed to
reach that level of fame. That's not something that we'd
like developed, Like, that's that's you shouldn't that should not

(30:20):
be possible. Our brains are not equipped for it. Yeah,
And then I feel like it's like they get affirmed
in that belief because a lot of people do rely
on them and maybe they're mania to like make sure
they get paid or make sure like their family they're
being Yeah, you're being you know, Like I have a

(30:41):
small list of like actual like a list like celebrity
friends who have been you know who are like for
real celebrities and are also like, yeah, my uh my
last accountants stole two hundred thousand dollars from me, Like,
and I didn't even know, you know, uh this person,
you know, I had this person on tour with me,

(31:03):
and you know they robbed this guy robbed the opener.
Like just all these like stories to where you're like, well, yeah,
the people you do have around you, So even if
you didn't have mental health issues, you would get paranoid,
you would still get paranoid. Yeah, it's example to get paranoid.
I mean, yeah, it's I yeah, all of it's all

(31:25):
of this is very obvious as a problem. But and
what's unsettling to me. Sorry, I just want to say
really quickly, one of the things that the fact that Kanye,
as you you pointed out years earlier, very astutely talked
about the things that happened to him when he is
having an episode in a very lucid way, makes me wonder,

(31:48):
and maybe this is a little conspiratorial where they're people
listening who are like, well, shit, if we can just
play into that stuff, we might be able to get
him to we might be able to push him in
whatever direction we want. Because there's definitely a whole unch
of people. I mean, I can totally see Kenda someone's
doing that because because she's she's been playing him like
a fiddle for a long time. And that's a long time.
That's gonna reach a tipping point at the end, at

(32:11):
the end end end of this episode. And one could ask,
how could you be so heartless? Oh? How could you
be so It wasn't how could you be there? Evil?
But also I didn't get along the same thread of
a tortured artist thinking they have to be depressed, yes,

(32:32):
make art. I think there's an element of that even
for Kanye, like I don't think, I mean, I think
it was if he's medicated or not, you know what
I mean, Like he is. He has said that sometimes
he goes authentication. Yeah, exactly, you know, and I and yeah,
the tortured artist thing. I know some like New York
Times bestsellers authors who are like, yes, I know I'm bipolar,

(32:52):
and I know when I have to write this book,
I'm going to get off these pills. I'm gonna write
it in in two days, I'm gonna turn in. And
I think that's that's made worse by people like tying
like people in doing my research for this episode, a
lot of people talk to West in person and like
talk about like his genius, And I think this idea

(33:14):
of his genius mixed in with his mental state can
create a really volatile reaction someone's brain when they feel
like certain altered states of consciousness are what makes you
have your genius. And that's really the way people have
talked about this to Conye in person. I think it's
really unhealthy. Yeah. I would argue that telling a child

(33:35):
they're a genius is abusive, and it's probably true for
telling an adult. It's one of the worst things you
can ever tell anybody. Don't don't, no one's a genius.
Stop using that word. It's poison. You think your illness
is your genius? Yeah, going back to this, like to
these leaked unused Tucker Carlson videos, something like this in

(33:55):
a better world would like completely tank Tucker forever, Like yeah,
but none of that matter because in any other yeah,
in any other universe, at that point you should be like, yo,
we gotta stop the cameras man. No. Yeah, Like, this
leak reveals unequivocally how Carlson uses this platform to sanitize
anti Semitism and other conspiracy theories. For a general audience.

(34:16):
Carlson cuts out just enough to claim plausible deniability. This
will not impact him professionally at all. Um, he makes
his he makes a living manipult people on Fox News. Um,
this should tank him. It won't, But it does reveal
how he works with extreme clarity. Having these behind the
scenes glimpses and then also having having the added context

(34:39):
of these cut segments also shines a light on some
of the more dog whistle the aspects that did make
it into the aired interview. Uh like this bit that
started with that that that that started with Kanye talking
about his grievances with Jared Kushner, you know, or he
made these peace treaties? Where was that? You know? The
facts on this right here. So I'm like, well, I
think that was between Israe and some of the Arab nations.

(35:02):
I just think it was to make money. I don't know,
is that is that too heavy handed to put in
this platform? No, that's that's your opinion. We're not in
a censorship business, Okay, thank you. And I just think
that that's what they're about is making money. I don't
think that they have the ability to make anything on
their own. I think they were born into money. So

(35:25):
when Kanye said I don't think they have the ability
to make anything on their own and talking about, you know,
peace treatise with the intention to make money, Carlson knew
that Kanye was just talking about like the Jews, like
that's like he he knew that's what was going on,
and decided to keep those dog whistly aspects. It's yeah,
I'm I'm going to quote from a lad near ry.

(35:49):
This provides uncontrovertible proof that Carlson knew Kanye was being
anti Semitic during the interview. In other words, Tucker Carlson
and his team purposely edited their footage to make Kanye's
comments into a dog whistle instead of a foghorn. He
purposely coded Kanye's anti semitism. Carlson knows how to spread
anti semitism while avoid getting called out. He did it here.

(36:10):
This itself should be a far bigger scandal than anything
Kanye has said. Carlson knowingly spreaded this code anti semitism
and knowingly kept the anti semitism that he knew he
wouldn't get called out on, and knowingly cut the part
that he knew would get him in trouble. Carlson has
spent has spent years spreading anti Semitic conspiracy theories, from
a full documentary about George Sorrow's destroying Western civilization to

(36:33):
multiple uses of the Great Replacement conspiracy theory to anti
Semitic guests talking about globalist elites ruling in d C.
This is who Tucker Carlson is America's leading purveyor of
mainstream anti Semitism. He also showed everybody the the ultra
light being to the genitals. He did one thing and

(36:56):
it was more based moments. That was pretty Uh that
was a thing. I was like, all right, man, okay,
you did genital tannin got it? Uh, But yeah, that's
his that's his particular Like mutant power is saying something
without saying something, and all of us know what you're saying,

(37:20):
but you ain't say it. So when I go, what
then did you just say? You could say? What? Are
you talking about? Nothing? You know it? I mean he's
got it. I mean he's he's the Picasso that like
just and it's and it's so infuriating and speaking of
kind of dog whistles and stuff, similar to Kanye has
been about the Jews creating cancel culture by doing the

(37:43):
whole I don't think they have the ability to make
anything on their own statement, Kanye isn't playing another kind
of classic anti anti Semitic trope that or that originates
with Nazi propaganda, um that you know, Jews are incapable
of physical labor or making things. This comes up a
lot in the nineteen forty Nazi propaganda film The Eternal Jew,

(38:04):
one of the most vile films ever made a quote
from Mike Rothschild, So now, I I don't think Kanye
Kandie is not seeing the Eternal Jew. All the the
only people, most weird Nazi nerds who referenced the Eternal
Jew haven't seen the Eternal Jew. Like But but the
point is that you don't need to see it. These

(38:27):
these these stereotypes are so ingrained to how many people
see Jewish people that there's things that you can believe
without the slightest consideration or like a deep thought. Well,
and they were, you know, the The Eternal Jew was
influential in anti Semitic propaganda, but a lot of what
it was doing was kind of codifying, almost if you will,
the most popular stereotypes and racialist attacks of the day.

(38:51):
Like it It didn't invent stuff so much as it
was like, all right, we're going to we're going to
boil it all down in kind of the most iconic form. Yeah,
there's I was today years old. I had no idea
what you some up. Uh, But but I can see
how that concept has such source material because as somebody
who you know, I have just anti Semitism is just

(39:17):
has never been on the menu for me. Um. Some
of the the tropes that come with that, in my mind,
seems so bizarre from like what are you talking about?
What did that come from? What did you talk about?
They did what? Now? You know? So like someone like
so to know that, like, well there is source material,

(39:39):
there's there's stuff that comes from it comes from this time.
It was because it is because this was like an
intentional thing that people have been pushing towards for hundreds
of years, like this is it's it's yes, this didn't
just happen, this is like people are trying to make
this a reality, like it's it's it has been a
propaganda project and a hate campaign that's been genocidal for

(40:02):
hundreds of years. Yeah, because I'm like, okay, you know
at sometimes Okay, I'm trying to say, what up? Let
me try to figure out what I'm trying to say.
Sometimes you can track, Yeah, like the protocols, Like the protocols.
I was like, until you understand those protocols, Like some
of the anti Semitic thought and rhetoric is like, man,
what are you talking about? Like what you know? Text

(40:24):
like that don't just like pop into existence. Someone wrote
that with a specific intent, with an intent for something.
But what I'm the point I'm trying to get at
is like there are some racist sentiments and tropes that
I I'm following your logic as to why you're saying
that about them, Like clearly it's a racist shrope. But

(40:47):
black men are violent. And I'm like, well, okay, I mean,
if all you know of us is gang violence, if
that's all you've seen, and I'm following your logic, you've
just never been exposing any other stuff. Now, once you
get exposing and stuff, you still feel like that, it's
like all right, you just you just trash, You just
you just trash. But I'm like, I'm following, I'm following you.

(41:07):
You know what i mean? You only know rap music Okay,
that's all you know of us. Okay, then you think
that this is what we are racist, because clearly most
people are more than everybody's, more than the one thing
you're trying to put them in, you know. But I'm
following that it's just for me again, like I said,
since like anti Semitism was never on the menu, like
it was never just it just wasn't a part of

(41:28):
my world. When you hear things like the Protocols of
Zion and and some of this stuff, even even learning
about the Holocaust, Like if you're a black person, you like,
what's your deal? Like why what? What you what is
so wrong with them? Like I don't understand why you
don't like them so much? Like it it's just it's

(41:50):
like I can't even follow your logic, you know, because
it's not even personal hatred of all people, right, It's
it's framed within this conspiratory thing. But like, no, I
don't hate Jewish people. I'm just questioning the Jewish power
brokers in Hollywood and I think that they have too
much influence. Right, That's how it's framed, and that's how
people that's how someone like Kandie might actually like I

(42:12):
think I actually feel because it works in Hollywood, right,
But but that but that is the only way you
get there is because of decades of anti semitism like that,
that's it's it's it's it's that. That's that's the kind
of point I was trying. Not that, Yeah, j K Rowling,
Banker Goblins, and it just like exists by itself exactly
like none none of these things are made in a vacuum.

(42:33):
They made thought of that. So you said it, oh ship,
oh yeah, there's a start of David on the floor
of the bank. I didn't even notice it. That don't
point out its yeah one. I mean, one of the
things people will point out that is true is that
that was not a set. They were filming in an

(42:53):
actual building and they chose to have that there, and
and the building had a star of David in the
Florida and they chose to film there. Yes, it seems
like that would have been something people might have noticed, yeah,
at least not even go over it, not even like
yo yo maybe maybe listen, maybe we don't mean anything
by it, but it could be seen as you know, yeah,

(43:19):
and just like just like none of these things that
are in a vacuum and Kanye's own statements are not
in a vacuum. After Kanye made these tweets, uh, you know,
four Chan was quick to take it, was quick to
eat up the Kanye pill. There Kanye Kanye threads took
up of took up most of polls posts for for days.

(43:40):
There's there's just there's screenshots of of poll just Kanye
post after Kanye post, all of all of the trending
ones are all about Kanye. Uh. Nick Frentz and his
like grapper followers were celebrating the tweets and they see
this as an opportunity took on a mainstream you know
there their brand of horrible anti Semitic fascism um, and

(44:03):
I hope people are prepared to take on you know,
fake Kanye stand accounts that are going to pop up
everywhere to defending is Ani Semitism, like you know, and
defending and talking about anti Semitism from the point of
quote unquote being a Kanye fan. It's there's a lot
of Yeah, we've been a lot of fascist trolling is
gonna it's gonna come in the mask of Kanye West now.

(44:25):
And we have been Yeah, we've I mean We've been
enduring among black Twitter. We have been enduring Kanye stands
for a while. You know what I'm saying that are
just like, no, it's just a genius, y'all, don't understand.
He's playing three D. We've been enduring this for a while.
It's actually been very interesting in the sphere of the Internet.
I existed of seeing people being like, uh, yeah, no,

(44:48):
I got nothing. Yeah. There has been a good amount
of people that are finally tapped out, And I think, well,
I think that what is that type of vacuum opens
up face for bad actors to use the mask of
Kanye to then just promote fascism under under this mask
now like Trump, like magat sure, I mean like, And

(45:12):
I think that this creates a more specific type of
dog whistle think because megas obviously way more way more broad.
I meant like me like Kanye's use of absolutely, I mean,
we have you know. Nick Frentees posted the tweets and
his in his telegrams saying no way, we are so back.
Do you trust the plan? Baked Alaska? Do you trust

(45:36):
Baked Alaska? Posted his telegram This is real, vindicated and
one of my least favorite telegram channels Zoomer Waffen, which god,
just god, it's called every every time I talked about
zoomer waff I like I lose five years of life.
So people again, because folks who are not terminally online

(45:59):
or like, what are you guys talking about? Waffen means
weapon in German. The reason that it is a thing
the Nazis talk about is that the s S had
like a bunch of different things the s S did,
but one of the things they had was a unit
that existed within kind of the traditional hierarchy called the
Waffen s S, which means the weapons s S. They
committed a shipload of war crimes. Ever since, Waffen has

(46:22):
been a thing that you can kind of like stick
to the end of the name of a group and
you're signifying that you think the SS was based Adam.
Waffen is kind of the most prominent terrorist group in
the United States and other countries. That's been a big thing.
And you know, it's not like zoom like you get
what they're saying, the zoom or Waffen, right, it's the
thing anyway, That's that's what you need to know. I

(46:44):
just I just I get so pissed because I'm like,
he's fucking nerds, know that, dangerous fucking nerds. It sucks. Yeah,
I hate you, y, I'm just like you, just you God,
if you weren't so dangerously violent, you know, just yeah,

(47:06):
that's that. That is the recurring statement on this show
is that if they weren't dangerous, they would be much
more funny. Um so yeah, the Zoomerwafins posted the tweet
and not not not all heroes wear capes somewhere easy
gath merch and with its anyway. So, just two days

(47:29):
after the ati semitic posts on his social media accounts
which got him banned, Conye then attended the Nashville premier
of Candice Owens Daily Wire documentary project The Greatest Lie
Ever Sold George Floyd and the Rise of BLM. And
just imagine being one of the most famous people on

(47:50):
the planet and choosing to hang out with the Daily Wire. Yeah,
like like the like they like the word grooming obviously
means nothing now, but like they groomed him into this ship,
like the and groomed him into this nonsense. Kanye made

(48:10):
a lot of choices here, and those choices were like
very selfish and based in narcissism. And while he is sick,
he's not a victim fundamentally, but he also is being
taken advantage of, right, Like that's that's fair to say.
That doesn't exculpate him from his guilt inness. But we're
going Mr West another another Kanye reference, Wake up, Mr West,

(48:34):
and like, like real quick, the the part that is
so well, obviously it's all inferiorating. But I'm like, you're
you're you're going out of your way to purposefully tear
down black people when they suffering. You don't have to.

(49:00):
You don't You could even say, like, hey, you know
which is true, Like there are some in the organization
of Black Lives Matter as an organization, there's some problematic
stuff that needs to be discussed and worked out, you
know what I'm saying, and being like, Okay, well, let's
get some oversight here. What are we doing here, Let's
have some accountability? Why are you why are you inting
Swart Floyd Man, Well, because this is this is this

(49:22):
is Kenneth Owens like explicit grift exactly. That's what she
she Her job is to conflate the Black Lives Matter
nonprofit organization with the Black Lives Matter movement, and and
and and use criticisms of the nonprofit organization to basically
say that any form of advocacy by people of color

(49:43):
in you know, using the Black Lives Matter movement banner
is is discredited because of the issues with the formal
nonprofit organization in Portland. I have never I've never seen
a single thing related to the Black Lives Matter organization,
not a single thing. I mean, I guess maybe the
signs like are solved by them, I don't know that.
But like, it's it's not it's not a president. We're

(50:05):
talking about risings. It's not a fit. Like it's the
the conflation of the of the nonprofit organization with the
movement is the specific thing that canadas Once has focused
on for the past five years of her career. That's
that's what she makes money on, is exploiting this little thing.
And it's the thing that Tucker has adopted and this
is the thing that she is convinced. It's just so

(50:27):
it's just so like what do you do, like, okay,
so any anything, okay, talk about talk about globalism you okay,
that's your little thing. That's your little thing. Okay, uh,
you know, you don't like that. You don't like the Democrats,
you know, you know, Brandon whatever. But it's like, Okay,

(50:47):
a man died and and that's and the cop was
proven guilty and that that that's that's the most gross
part because Kanye is embraced conpc theories now about the
fine thing, right, Yeah, but his embraceive conspiracy theories is
not just limited to anti is not just limited to
anti Semitism. He now openly denies the proven facts of

(51:08):
the events that led to the most recent international uprising
in the Black Lives Matter movement. He jumped on board
his pal kendas owens absurd quote unquote documentary that claims
the sequence of events proven in court and witnessed by
the world via self and footage, did not actually happen. Um.
That's why I'm like, you're going out of your way now.
It's like you you're you're on a path, and I'm like,

(51:30):
you're purposefully going out of your way to hurt us.
And that's the part that I'm like, what I said,
I don't use the word cone often, but I'm like, like,
why are you doing why are you doing this? Like
you're you're well because we know why you're doing it.
And it's just like Candice, come on, like Cape Cape

(51:52):
for the Republicans, do what you gotta do if you
honestly think the solutions for our community comes from the
conservative world, Kape for him, do what you gott You
don't have to go out of your way like this
is you're going to like you're taking the scenic route
to just like okay, yeah, it's they it's because I

(52:15):
don't they don't actually believe that that's what the solutions.
They're just they're just living a really wealthy, extravagant lifestyle. Canda,
someone gets to travel with Kanye West to Paris Fashion Week,
she gets to have a red Carb premier with Kanye West,
Kid Rock and ray J. Like that's that's the life
that she has been able to create by exploiting this thing.

(52:36):
And of course she's going to do it because that's
how you become a millionaire. Two kinds of people get
successful on the right. One kind is fuck you got mine,
I'm gonna get what I can as quickly as I
can uh, and the other is I want to create
a Christian fascist ethno state. Um, Like those are the
two kinds, and one feeds into the other and Canadas,

(52:59):
Owens has decided, I'm fine with helping the other kind
of prominent conservative accomplish their goals because it won't get
too bad, you know, during my lifetime. I can make
enough money. I'm one of the good ones. They're like,
this is this is this is the same thing with
someone like Blair White for you know, for um, for
trans issues. There's there's there's a specific tokenized figures Dave

(53:23):
Reuben with you know, with gay people, like if they
align as one of the good ones and they think
that things won't get bad enough in their lifetime and
they'll they'll they'll just they'll just be able to profit. Yeah, yeah, wait, wait,
just to make sure, is Dave Reuben the dude that
was like, well, scientifically speaking, a mermaid couldn't be that dark. No,

(53:46):
that's uh, that feels like a Ben Shapiro or crowder bit.
I I don't remember specifically, Okay, I thought that the
way it was hilarious, it was one of those clowns
they yeah, well, scientifically speaking, they're all paid by the
same dude, it doesn't matter. I feel need to get
this joke off, So it's frusting that Kanye not only

(54:10):
just attended the premiere, but it's now actually parenting the
disinformation and the the talking points that Kenneth Owens used
in her faux documentary. So just a few days after
he went to the Red Carpet, he started spreading the
disinformation on the police's murder of George Floyd on a podcast.
I watched the George Floyd documentary that Candice has put up.

(54:31):
One of the things that his two roommates said was,
they want a tall guy like me, they want a
talk guy like me. And the day when he died,
he said a prayer for you know, eight minutes. He
said a prayer for eight minutes. They hit him with
the fence and all if you look, the guy's knee

(54:54):
wasn't even on his neck like that. When he said Mama, mama,
his is his girlfriend, they said, he's screamed for his mama.
Mama was his girlfriend's in the documentary. So that's pretty bad. Um.
And after after that he starts talking about other kind
of random conspiracy theory stuff that inevitably leads him to
making more comments about the Jews. Um. So here's that

(55:17):
clip they blocked me out. The Jewish media block me out.
This ship lit right, I'm lit right, I'm lit, I'm lit.
You know what I'm saying, JP Morgan, I put a
hundred forty million dollars and the JP Morgan and they
treated me like ship. So if JP Morgan Chase is
treated me like that, how they treating the rest of you?

(55:40):
And this chaunts That's what I'm saying. I am outraged
by the time. People always they want to calm it
down because no matter what, you didn't break no law.
I didn't break a law anything, but this is it's
like a social contract. Candice always has a word for
him forgetting but it's basically like they told candas so

(56:02):
and she couldn't hang out with me. For the Jewish people.
What I'm doing is I'm me too in the Jewish culture.
I'm saying, y'all gotta stand up and admit to what
you've been doing. And y'all just got away with it
for so long did y'alln't even realize what you're doing?
And it's like I can't funk with me either because
y'all behind that gate of fish, y'all soft, your hands

(56:24):
got soft. You ain't out here getting beat up every
day like me. You ain't out here getting called crazy
every day like me. I'm not gonna play anymore of
that podcast because honestly, this is where it starts getting
into the territory where it's just kind of exploiting someone's
mental health issues for entertainment, and it gets like, this
is where it gets very disjointed. Connie starts talking about

(56:47):
how the Louisvatan company killed one of his friends, Yeah,
who actually died of cancer. Um, it's a it's a
conspiracy that Connie has developed the past year. And he
also talked about this for seven minutes UM in the
unused Tucker Carlson segments, which I'm also not going to
include because it's also for context, Like Virgil is like

(57:10):
royalty among our community, like what he did being the
versus Black, like head designer at Louis battan Um, and
I think a lot of us think a lot of
us I sound like Trump, a lot of people that
are saying no, but there is an understanding that UM.
Like in a lot of ways Kanye was jealous of him,

(57:33):
Um in the in the way that he was able
to succeed in Louis Batton and then now that he's gone,
and clearly Kanye doesn't grieve well as we know yea
and yeah, another segment of the Tucker leak includes the
clip where Kanye is discussing visions from God on how
to build free energy and fully kinetic energy communities and

(57:55):
kinetic energy cities. So this combine, like this is where
I'm not going to actually include an more clips of
Kanye because it's just it's it's just the laughing at
the person who's not doing okay bit and that's not cool.
Now obviously, like mental illness is not cannot be used
as an excuse for bigotry or anti semitism um. But

(58:17):
exploding someone's suffering through like up a manic episode to
score political points is also like immoral um. And we're
seeing a lot of like false choices being presented towards
mental illness and anti semitism, and the answer can actually
be both. Um. You know, those struggling with mental illness

(58:37):
do not kind of they don't originate these types of bigotry,
right um. But in but when you're manic, you can
latch onto things and reflect them. Um. And that's not
saying it's okay, but that also it's we should not
deny that, Like I have seen a lot of people
saying like, mentally ill people don't say racist things, which

(58:58):
are like, that's not true. Like if like, if you,
if you've been around a lot of mentally ill people,
they cannot they can it's it's it's. It's the same
thing with people when people's brains are deteriorating on dementia.
One of the last things they can say are curse words. Yeah,
it's it's, it's it's it's one of those weird like
like vector points inside our brain. So yeah, you you

(59:19):
actually can be be racist when you're not usually racist
if you're experiencing a severe mental health episode, and that's
not that's not excusing you for your behavior. But also
we shouldn't create this false division, and we shouldn't like
in some ways it's like you're like a gate keeping
mental illness by saying no, no real mentally ill person
could say these bad things, which actually in supportive people

(59:42):
experiencing mental distress. Yeah, it's on that same lane as
like the you know, the mass shooters and stuff like that.
If you're just going to call it mental illness, then
like you can obscate any response. But but but also
refusing to acknowledge that mental health can play a fact
are inside some mass shootings also misses the point exactly.

(01:00:03):
It's yeah, you can play a very large factor, especially
in the waves like Schizawave inspired shootings. Exactly. That's That's
what I was gonna say. That that that conflation of
something that really is real and really is important, you know. Uh,
you see that. I see that with like I've known
people who have worked in like um, you know, like

(01:00:28):
legit human trafficking, like not like the dog whistlee version,
but like actual rescuing you know, traffic girls from the
sex industry who were like pulled from a village you
know what I'm saying and put into a brothel. Like
people that are like really out here, like actually doing

(01:00:48):
the work, you know, where trafficking is a thing, you know.
And then you conflated with these you know, conspiracies, and
then like and of course a person who really works
in this thing, you like, you finally feel like you
getting some traction with people to actually care about the
stuff you care about, you know what I'm saying. And
now now it's like if you mentioned trafficking. It's like, yeah,

(01:01:14):
you can't. It's like, how do I It's like, no, serious,
it's really a thing. Guy's really it is, you know.
But trying to disentangle it from Yeah, that's what you're saying,
is like to to to do a one or the
other thing is missing the point of both situations. Yeah, yeah,
because because obviously, like Kanye isn't someone who's dealing with
like a temporary mental health episode where he's yelling slurs

(01:01:36):
on the side of a sidewalk. Kanye is like an
affulent man who's making calculated and financially driven choices. But
that still doesn't mean that stuff like bipolar does not
play a factor in the types of impulsive decision making
he's making and the types of people that he surrounds
himself with, which influences this pattern of behavior. Combined with
like social media and combined with his celebrity status, christ

(01:01:57):
the cycle of really healthy choices. Um Like when when
you're talking about like fake children being planted in your home,
that's like, yeah, that's not like it's that's that's not
dismissing that as being no way related to mental illness.
I think is kind of a misstep. Um. I mean

(01:02:19):
it's It's one of the things that's tough about this
is that it hits all of the areas that, like
the primary places where conversation takes part socially are worst
at dealing with. Because like, as we've said, mental illness
is a major factor in this. It also does not
exculpate him from bad behavior. It doesn't make what he's
saying not racist. Um. But it's also tied into like

(01:02:42):
this deep manipulation campaign that the right is because they've
been looking for a guy like this forever. And you
can see like that that's why Tucker and all these
folks were so quickly to spin up when he wound
up being like amenable to that, like and it's yeah,
because he's he's very clearly being encouraged to keep doing
these sort of things for like entertainment and cloud um.

(01:03:05):
And I think a lot of the responses to this
kind of show how stigmatized that more severe personality disorders
are compared to stuff like anxiety or depression or a
d H d UM. Because you also don't want to
like villainize bipolar disorder instinct and stigmatize it further because
a lot of people can live with bipolar disorder. I've
known I've known people that live with with bipolar disorder

(01:03:27):
who are not going on anti semitic rants like it's
like it manifests different and lots of other people. So
it's you should not use this as an example to
stigmatize other people with this or say it's just this
um it creates you have to talk about. You have
to kind of think of with this in a multi
in a multi fasted fashion where someone's not just good
or not just bad. It's actually you have to get

(01:03:49):
you know, less into like puritanical, you know, perfectly unblemished
victims and you know evil e like like evil intention
depress serves like it. It's it's more complicated than that.
And the Internet is bad with bad bad of nuance
one of the starns out The Internet sucks at Nuance.

(01:04:11):
The closest off we're going to talk about how Kanye
really has kind of been played by by people like
Candace Owens because a little over a week after his
banishment from the two big mainstream social media platforms this
past Monday, Kandie announced that he has entered a deal
to buy the failed far right social media platform Parlor.

(01:04:32):
Parlor CEO George Farmer said that his wife, conservative influencer
Candace Owens approached Kanye about a Parlor deal while attending
his Paris Fashion Week show where the boat where the
pair of them wore the black wore the White Lives
Matter shirts. So Candace Owens has been playing Kanye this
entire time and is and is convinced Kanye to buy

(01:04:55):
her husband's failing business like she's just playing him, like
like Parlor has currently only daily active users. Even gab
get Her and Trump's and Trump's Truth Social have way
more daily users than Parlor, and Kennis Owens has convinced
has convinced to buy this platform. I'm sorry, did you

(01:05:20):
say her husband owns Parlor? Yes, her husband is the
CEO of Partner. Okay, And for an idea of how
failed it is, the people I know who spend a
lot of their time hanging out in far right spaces
don't even get on Parlor anymore. Like it's it's it's
it's not, it doesn't matter, it's yes, it's the CEO

(01:05:43):
is Kennys Owens husband. I am climped. I didn't. I mean,
it's an obvious grift. Right, yeah, I'm like, see, this
is a bad one. She's a very smart she is,
she's a successful grifter. She that is. I I can't
believe it, Like she finally broke character. What I've been

(01:06:03):
asking for these last to this, these these two hours,
is give me a moment of clarity. You just gave
it to me, right like, she, Oh, there it is.
This is what I've been waiting for. Got it. I
have I've one more page before we before we close out.
So okay, okay, alright. I feel I don't know how.

(01:06:24):
I can't explain this, the sense of relief. I feel
like it's so weird to say that, but I feel
so relieved that I'm like, no, it's it's. It's it's
it's extremely telling and it confirms a lot of the
things that we've been thinking about what's been going on
between her and Kanye for the past like five years.
Um So, Kanye has been hit with a with a
two d and fifty million dollar lawsuit by the family
of George Floyd. The lawsuit was filed by Roxy Washington

(01:06:47):
on behalf of her and George Floyd's a daughter, Gina.
In In a statement, Washington's lawyers confirmed that she's doing
Kanye West and his business partners for defamation, harassment, misappropriation,
and infliction of ootional distress UM, and the legal team
is allegedly considering a number of other possible defendants in
the case, including Candace Owen's. So it sucks that that's happening,

(01:07:11):
but I like that, like that, that's just like retraumatizing
to the entire family. Um that they're having to dredge
up all this stuff to sue fucking Kanye West and
Candace Owen's. That sucks, But I hope that they get
all of their money. Like yeah, I like, I hope
that they get to live forever on the money of
Kanye West. Um, it's like, look, dude, like again, it's

(01:07:36):
just that like that oh saying it's like, you ain't
gotta like me, but just you you don't. You also
don't have to be in my way, you know. So
even when I look at somebody like a Candice or whatever,
this like this sphere of of specifically persons of color
in this right wing grivet, that I'm like, you don't, like,

(01:07:57):
you don't have to help me, but you also don't
have to hurt me, you know. And that's and that's
the part to me again, I keep coming back to that.
It's like you're going out of your way to hurt us,
Like that's that's I'm like, I don't get it, man,
Like you don't. You don't have to do. There is
so much money. Here's the thing. And this is gonna
sound terrible, but I mean it to be terrible. There

(01:08:19):
is so much money to be made off white people.
Like you can make so much money from them. We
have a lot of it. We took it from everywhere else. Yes,
you can make so much from them without destroying it,
without tearing us down, you know. Just it's like get
your money. Okay, Yeah, I'm gonna I'm now gonna read

(01:08:43):
like my thesis on this, because again I did, I did,
I did not. I initially did not want to cover this.
I thought we probably shouldn't. I thought that it's it's
kind of explitting the same media cycles that encourages this
type of healthy behavior in the first place. But I
have a thesis on this that I when I kind
of go through and then get on them, we can
and and and and this discussion. So in an online

(01:09:04):
economy based on shock ad driven head discourse and data
collecting online engagement. Kanye's outbursts are useful to be deployed
as ready made ammunition for culture wars, even though what
he said is so obviously beyond the pale quoting New Republic,
West's celebrity, still existent despite years of controversy and alienation,

(01:09:26):
is simply too valuable for the Right after decades of
being denied the endorsement of of predominant celebrities, with the
exception of like Clint Eastwood, um and and and someone
like Donald Trump, and the Rights gritting their teeth through
how celebrities don't really matter to them. The Right cherishes
the affection it receives from controversial crossover figures such as

(01:09:48):
Elon Musk and Kanye West, and doesn't want to lose
them to disrepute, or at least wants to continue using
them in spite of it. West's willingness to lend his
imper mater to the pet cause is of people like
Carlson and kind of Swan's makes him invaluable and un jettisonable.
To pick up a quote from the from uh The

(01:10:09):
Washington Post. Polling has repeatedly shown that white Republicans view
themselves as targets of discrimination equivalent to non majority groups.
Carlson and Trump, sharing in that sense, highlight anecdotes that
reinforce that sense, and push back against the group that's
most forcefully calling for the playing field to be leveled,
the Left, the new elite. So Carlson sees Kanye wearing

(01:10:32):
a shirt that explicitly casts whites as victims and understands
the opportunity. Here's a member of the inner circle of
the elite, a black man who's willing to elevate the
idea that white lives are disadvantaged in an equivalent way
to black lives. To validate the victimization and discomfort, Let's
set up an interview unquote. So for Carlson's purposes, West

(01:10:55):
did not have to be holly coherent. He can easily
edit out the parts where he's ranked about the Jews,
visions of kinetic energy cities, and fake children. Carlson was
able to present to his viewers a famous black man
who is being punished for holding views abhorred by the
gate keeping cultural elites. In the podcast, West combined his
anti semitism and anti black infantilization into slander that Jewish

(01:11:20):
people have owned the black voice. But it's Kanye whose
voice and platform is being used by far right grifters
for profit by stoking white populist racism against both Jews
and black people, and now to buy their failed social
media apps. The conservative Christian right that has grown to
use Kanye as a token won't be so quick to

(01:11:41):
disown him for overtly conspiratorial or biggest statements. One of
the lessons that the right has learned from Donald Trump
is that there's no advantages to be gained from criticizing
one zone as long as they're remaining loyal to the
fundamental causes of the movement, especially when it comes to
exploiting white grievance. West is then permitted to be as
blatantly anti Semitic as he wants without fear of sanction.

(01:12:04):
He is clearly bigoted and clearly suffering, but the right
clearly considers him to be the most useful idiot, or
perhaps one of the brave few people who's willing to
say the things that others may think but don't yet
dare utter. Some have argued that there's no point in
searching for meaning in Kanye's almost decades long descent, that
there's no deeper insight here, just the truth that that

(01:12:26):
anti Semitism is noxious and we're a tragically long way
from defeating it. But I think that misses the relatively
clear trajectory that Kanye has been on since ultra life,
being to this now Christian identity but black shit, and
the very real danger and influence that a relatively small
and unknown weirdos like Candice Owens can have on like

(01:12:48):
countrywide politics. And finally, to paraphrase from the Columbia Journalism Review,
Kanye West's statements are not of no consequence, but anyone
who spends time thinking about them and talking about them
needs to not be complicit in exacerbating those consequences, whether
that be platforming bigotry or stigmatizing mental health issues. If

(01:13:08):
the median and the press must cover Kanye, they should
do so with context and with an eye towards accuracy, reality, history,
and motivation. At minimum, coverage should isolate what's important to
Kanye's and the story and describe it clearly for what
it is, rather than mining him for controversy and then
performing ignorance or agnosticism about the substance of what he's saying,

(01:13:32):
sadly too much. Top Line coverage of Kanye's recent outbursts
did the latter, with several mainstream outlets referring to the
tweets and headlines as alleged anti Semitic posts, or wrote
that the posts have been widely deemed to be anti
Semitic language that clearly reveals more about the authors than
its subject. So that that's kind of my thesis on
why this is worth talking about and all of the

(01:13:55):
moving aspects about what's going on here between Canadas, Owens, Tuck, Tucker, Carlson,
and Kandye West. So, yeah, good work, let's all go
be sad. Yeah, there's not really a solution here except
besides celebrity. Like, I mean, you know, all of this

(01:14:19):
has at its root the same problems, which is that
when you allow money to equivalentate like social and political
power or equal social and political power, and when you
then hand certain individuals huge amounts of money, um, a
lot of them will either be outright evil or out
of their minds, or a combination of the two, and

(01:14:40):
they can cause tremendous damage to society as a result
of it. Um. So it's good, Yeah, I think that
there's two. You know, from from my perspective, there's the
the metaphorical question of like, okay, is he disinvited to
the barbecue? Like, which is a you know, get a
metaphorical question, don't if you guys know what I mean

(01:15:02):
when we say that, It was like can he come
to the bar few? Yeah? So like yeah, you know
what I mean? Like, so the question we need to
ask as a community, as the culture, like he so
lovingly decides to mock um, but is that okay? So,
as a community, what does it take for us to
finally disavow somebody's statements and just be like, all right, brother,

(01:15:24):
you're gone, you know, because right now it's up for debate.
You know, there are people that like, you know, we
checked out long time ago. You know, there are other
people that are like still like, you know, we love
the old Kanye and that genius is still in there. Yeah,
but this album slaps Okay, I know he problematic. I
know he put the red hat on, but you know,
the Sunday services were so dope, you know what I'm saying, Like,
so you have that discussion continually happening. But I think

(01:15:47):
that that's something asked for for our community. We need
to learn how to We need to really discuss, you know,
what does it take for us to like finally let
somebody go. Like again, I I keep going back to
our Kelly because I'm like, dog, we knew, we knew
since Aliah that like this brother had problems, you know.
I mean, I think if if there's a way to

(01:16:08):
not alienate him fully so that his only friend is
Candace Owens, that would be great exactly. That's that's why
it's up for debate. It's like you, I don't know
how that process works. That's what I'm trying to say.
That's part of the part. That's part of the problem.
It's like, but you know why we why it hasn't
had why it doesn't happen so fast? Like I said, like,
our defense is normally, our collective identity is the community.

(01:16:29):
That's how we defend each other and protect each other
from falling off the edge, either from the police or
from yourself. It's like you bring them in and just
be like, oh, baby, we need to have a talk,
you know. Um, But at some point you're like all right,
family done, you know. And that's what happened with R. Kelly.
It was like, all right, dog, we tried you know, uh,

(01:16:50):
we we tried you we can't do this no more,
you know. Um. I think there's that, and I think
there's also another question obviously, the the American evangelical, which
you know, statistically speaking, still only represents nine to eleven
percent of christian as a whole across the world. So

(01:17:12):
you really like it's a this is a specific to
us in America problem, And I just wonder that's another
question to me, Like y'all like they always looking for
whether it was Tim Tebow or you, always looking for champions,
you know, and and this keeps happening to you, keeps
happening to you, and y'all end up looking like assholes,

(01:17:34):
you know what I'm saying, and just not like the
faith you say you profess, Like when are y'all gonna
stop looking for champions, Like when you're gonna stop looking
for your and just be like, let's just do the
ship our book says, you know, like for better or
for worse? Like you know, I just think that these
are again, these are interesting cultural questions. See, you don't

(01:17:55):
need no celebrity, Like why y'all always think you need
a celebrity because you just because again you're just trying
to be cool while at the same time saying that
you stand against the culture. It's like, well, well, funk,
will you stand against the culture? Why are you always
trying to have somebody from the culture to be a hero,
you know, like well ship, Like, I don't know, I'm
just saying like I think I do think that Again,

(01:18:17):
I don't have no answers either, but I think that
these are like questions that everybody that this fool affected
y'all really need to ask yourself, Like you need to
ask yourself, you know, like you said, like the mental
health stuff, the problem of celebrity, which is a bigger problem.
But to me, these are he he he made. He's
making us inadvertently ask ourselves these big systemic questions that

(01:18:41):
we still are afraid to reckon with. I feel like
I think that's a good note to end. Well, everybody
that's gonna do it for all of us here man,
thanks for having the several podcasts that this is uh.
You can sten to hood politics by typing hood politics

(01:19:02):
into whatever it is you used to look for things,
and you can listen to it could happen here by
typing it could happen here into whatever thing you type
stuff into, go type stuff. Now bye, Oh God is dead.

(01:19:41):
I'm Robert Evans. Welcome to the podcast where the first
episode of Spooky Week past try to figure out who
murdered God and come to the conclusion that it was
almost certainly will weep, I'm pointing my finger at someone else. Actually, Robert,
I'm fingering Bigfoot. And wow. Okay, now now, Daniel, Daniel,

(01:20:01):
I'm gonna need you to just cut that audio online
out of the episode so that everyone on the team
can play it as a drop whenever we need to.
James admitting to fingering Bigfoot. Um, all right, that's gonna
be an episode everybody of a good week. God bless you.
This is it could happen here. This is Spooky Week, right,

(01:20:22):
we're recording our first spooky crazed be to God. Um,
all right, what do we what do we have for
the ladies and not not the gentleman. This one's just
for the ladies. I'm gonna say that right now, says
hers and slurs. It's it's what we what we got today.

(01:20:45):
What we got today, Robert Garrison, is some stories about
cryptids and So I want to start in the autumn
Garrison was not alive and Robert and now we're much younger,
and I want to start in northern California where one
night through Emen set out to execute a pretty routine
We trade right and had drops the kindyself, get some money,

(01:21:06):
come home. And it's not exactly a secret that at
that time and in that place there was a lot
of illegal girl operations and it's not exactly a secret. Yeah, yeah,
have you heard about this? Yeah? Yeah, I mean like
it's number one once you hit about anywhere in like
the coastal northern caliph Fornia, from like Santa Cruz on up. Uh,

(01:21:30):
bigfoot is like a topic not even not even really
of discussion. But there's just big foot ship all over
the goddamn place. Um, from Arcada to like Grants Pass
is probably the biggest density of bigfoot ship. But it's
all throughout or again all throughout Washington. You get a
decent amount in Idaho, I think too. Um, but yeah,

(01:21:50):
people make a lot of money of big foot. It's
even a Bigfoot highway up there. But yeah, I was
listening to a dogship podcast recently. It's not very good.
It's called wild thing. It's buy some former NPR reporter
the Squatches podcast. Right, Yeah, she's doing like a Bigfoot thing.
It's just not very good. Like there's bits in there
where she'll like quote one guy who's like, there's a lot.

(01:22:13):
There's so much evidence for bigfoot. If you type big
foot into Google, there's like a eleven million results, and
an actual scientist will be like, there's no evidence for bigfoot,
and she just as like, what are we to think?
Both sides? Both sides? Yeah, yeah, I did not find
it very edifying. I was listening to it while I

(01:22:33):
was alone on the mountain this weekend. There are two
sides to bigfoot story, rob it. It doesn't matter if
one of them is wrong. No, um, it's very fun.
But yeah, because I also the parts of the West
Coast that are Bigfoot country are also the parts of
the West Coast that grow like more pot than anywhere
else on planet Earth. Yeah. Yeah, which is interesting, isn't it?

(01:22:56):
Because these two things may or may not. Yeah, I
think they do. Please continue, Yes, so huluated, I will
use to loosely use the word documentary here. Yeah, loose
is is good for this, So I again to use
a few words loosely here. So according to David Holt,

(01:23:17):
house journalist, which is again a word I'm using maybe loosely,
But he does a pretty good job and he's fine
hold house. So the interesting thing about him and what
I do kind of like about him, is he's like
he worked as a trimmer. Like so the pot industry,
there's the people who move the marijuana around the country,

(01:23:40):
including smuggle it into places where it's still fully illegal.
There's the people who sell it, either illegally or at dispensaries. Um,
there's the people who grow it. And then the largest
by number chunk of the weed trade, or the trimmers.
And those are the people every season, usually in the fall,
come down for three or four months northern California's southern
Oregon mostly and they take raw marijuana that's been like

(01:24:04):
bucked and cut off of the plant and they trim
it into the kind of buds that you buy. Um.
And this guy was doing that back in the nineties,
and he ran into these stories about a big foot
murdering two or three Mexican guys. Yeah, that's exactly it. Yeah,
so I think he actually has a really good job
in this documentary. Yeah, I I actually didn't think it
was was bad. No, No, I was ready for it

(01:24:26):
to be bad, but I was quite impressed with So
what happened is, Yeah, like Robert says said, there are
these probably migrant probably undocumented workers right who come well
a lot of them, there's a good chunk of them, probably,
I don't know by my estimates. Maybe are like mostly
white kids from various parts of the country. A lot
of them are folks who are either kind of seasonally unhoused.

(01:24:50):
Many of them like live in camp basically in places
like Arcada a big chunk of the year, and then
we'll live on farms while they trim Um. There are
a decent chunk who are undocumented. A lot our mong um,
Like a lot of are like first, like particularly older
among people who like came here after Vietnam and started
businesses and then like their kids and grandkids got into

(01:25:13):
the pot trade. And we're like, well, my you know,
grandma and my aunts retired and they like they living
in the woods and are good at tremming, Like we
can make a bunch of extra money this way. Um,
it's all sorts up there. Yeah, it's kind of fascinating.
So these three guys set out to do this deal,
right that they're three of the people who fall into
the undocumented labor category, and they never come back, and

(01:25:35):
whole house is sitting in one of these farmhouses or
in a trailer or something, when when a couple of
guys come in and say, hey, those those dudes never
came back and they've been killed. Right, they seem to
have been sort of pretty brutally murdered, but the we
that they were carrying was still there, so it wasn't
like somebody shook them down and stole the weed. Right.

(01:25:56):
And yeah, you, by the way, if it was a
weed industry thing, you probably wouldn't because everyone's got a
lot of fucking weed. I Mean, people do steal weed,
but if you're out there doing a murder, it's probably
because somebody's fucking with your business in a bigger way
than whatever they happen to have on the fucking farm. Like,
I wouldn't be surprised if a pot murder would not
result in whatever ship they had in their trailer actually

(01:26:18):
getting jacked. Okay, right then, Yeah, because the weeds I
think that everyone has so at the time, their deaths
are largely, if not entirely factually attributed to Bigfoot. Right,
it's put out there that these people were murdered by Bigfoot. Now,
they are not the only people whose deaths have been
blamed on Bigfoot. Earlier this year, July two, Seminole County

(01:26:41):
Sheriff's Office reported the murder of Mr. Jimmy Knighton, and
the press release they said Larry Sanders has reported killing
Mr Jimmy Knighton by the South Canadian River. Sanders and
Knighton had been noodling in the river on July. Okay, now, yeah,
so given to me, Robert, you're you're from this part
of the World's when you stroke a catfish you don't stroke? Well, yes,

(01:27:05):
basically it's when you use kind of your fingers as
bait and you catch a catfish by the mouth. Right, Yes,
we call it noodling. What a country, Yes, I mean,
James C. Robert to the kids these days, catch a
catch a catch a catfish by the north being something
very different. So does noodling, Yeah, or as the Mormons

(01:27:26):
call it, soaking. Sure, there's a great story. This is
off topic, but there was just an outbreak in South
Lake City of armpit crabs because so many Mormon kids
are having having armpit sex, and it's it's so funny. Really,

(01:27:48):
it's not just wow, we're still doing this. We're still
doing this, gere, We're gonna be doing this the rest
of your natural life. Yeah, never getting past this ship.
This is what the future halls feed decades of arm fucking.
So Sanders, the knighting with they were old school noodling.
They were They weren't online, of course. Yeah, that's that's

(01:28:11):
the best kind of noodling in my opinion, That's what
I've heard. So they're at they're at the river. At
some point, Mr Sanders becomes convinced that Knighton has summoned
Bigfoot to kill him. Now, that's interesting. You don't hear
that a lot. You don't because I didn't think Bigfoot
was summonable. That wasn't on the table of things that
I thought one could do to a Bigfoot. I mean,

(01:28:33):
I've always thought Bigfoot was summonable, but not for murder.
For sex, sure, Okay, yeah, that's why his armpits are
so crabby. Well, that's what everyone says about Bigfoot, so
you can identify him in a crowd. So at some
point Sanders becomes convinced of Bigfoot is on his way
and he's going to kill him, and so he unfortunately

(01:28:54):
strangles his noodling partner to death. Well that's tragic. And
then a link part were it's gonna leave it. We're
it's gonna leave it. We're just gonna move straight on. Yeah, yeah,
So yeah, it does sound rather tragic, It does sound
rather sad. But he seems to have reported pretty openly

(01:29:16):
that he believed that Bigfoot was on its way and
if he didn't stop this ritual, that Bigfoot will kill him,
and a lot of as it turns out, things that
people can't really explain. Often the times when people are
in human to other humans tend to be explained as
the actions of monsters. Right, And I want to quote
from the documentarian, the director Joshua Rope, who made that film.

(01:29:44):
He says, the thing that people should be afraid of
is not the boogeyman in the woods. It's our next
door neighbors who will usually commit acts of violence that
will then terrify, you know, everybody on the block or
in the neighborhood. Rope said that working in northern California
was very scary. Did enter a sort of underworld, you know,
for lack of a better term, and you know, we

(01:30:04):
were really mindful to try and not overstay our welcome there.
So I want to get into cryptids a little bit,
and I want to get into some some of the
more famous ones as well as a curse. I've got
a curse here. Yeah. The curse is great because it's
invented by the California Park Service. But I want to
explain kind of the social functions that they sometimes serve

(01:30:26):
as well as just having some fun talking about cryptids.
So the one that I thought might serve as social function,
and probably the most famous crypted aside from Bigfoot, is
our friend the Chupacabra, right and yeah yeah. In English,
that translate to goat soccer, which is okay, yeah, yeah,

(01:30:47):
we're staying. We're staying on this bite. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
we're on themes a bit garrison. Its culture, yea, not
a costume. I'll say this. I'm reading a great book
right now about the god Soccer. No it's it's called
The Last Emperor of Mexico, and it's about that Habsburg
who tried to become the yeah yeah, and they hung

(01:31:09):
his assid in like three weeks. It's very funny. Um yeah,
good stuff. Huge respect to the people of Mexico. So
actually know the chuber Caabra doesn't come from Mexico, comes
from Puerto Rico. But I didn't know that. Actually, yes,
we get a little bit about the tuber Carbra. The
perhaps the best source for this, as far as I

(01:31:30):
can find, is this guy Benjamin Redford, who has written
a book about the Tupercabra, and he shows that nearly
all of the eyewitness accounts can be traced back to
this one, the first account, which was this woman called
Madeline Tolentino in the ninet nineties in uh in Puerto

(01:31:53):
rican Right. So it's also much more recent than I thought. Like,
the tuber Cabra is twenty seven years old, it is
said's it's younger earn me, which is quite remarkable given
how much cultural impact has had. Yeah, I thought I
thought it was much older. Yeah, be too. I thought
it was just like an old tiny border legend. And
you're what forty nine, James, that's correct. Yeah, yeah, okay,

(01:32:15):
just making no, Yeah, I'm just I'm just kicking here
for a couple more years before I can claim that
sweet I Heeart Mediation, get that I a ARP, go
to the be able to go to the fucking the
sizzler and get five percent off. That's it, man. I've
got to be issued in my nineteen eleven, which you
get when you're sixty years old. You get a you
get a nineteen eleven and you get a Loui's Gift card,

(01:32:36):
and you get to evoke the Second World War whenever
anyone is rude to you, even if you weren't in it,
and you're you're allowed to drive your car into a
farmer's market in the state of California up to twice.
You have to try. After that, you have to move
to Oregon. M M. That's right. So yeah, I'm until
my retirement. They I want to talk a little bit
about this, this super coupla. So uh. They're fascinating because

(01:32:59):
like with big Foot, right there are, as you have mentioned,
eleven million Google results, but no actual bigfoots right now,
no one's ever found a big foot. No one can
present two biggs feet a big big feet? Is that? Yeah?
It takes an eye, right, so it's it's from the
Italian big feet. That's ready, that's right? Yeah, Okay, so

(01:33:21):
there are a big feete, but there are tuper carbters um.
And the reason there are tuper covers is that what
people are tuber carter right, the name goat sucker. And
this this will shock you, Garrison, especially that the way
that they are sucking goats is perhaps not the way
you would expect. Interesting. Yeah, they're very innovative in this regard.

(01:33:42):
What is happening is people are finding their goats, their chickens,
their live stock, with their throat ripped out. Yeah yeah, yeah, okay,
so it is the way you most animals need throats, right,
it's one of the parts that Yeah, they're not interchangeable,
they're not. Yeah, they're really it's good to know. This
is all really important information. Yeah, so throat free goats, cattle,

(01:34:02):
cheap chickens tend not to survive very long. So a
lot of a lot of times people come out in
the morning find their animals throatless and dead. Yeah you could.
You could call it a deep throating. That's where they
get it right deep in the throat. So they these
animals are dead, and the people claim that they're drained

(01:34:24):
of blood, which isn't quite true. Of course, there's there's
only there's only two possible explanations, one obviously being vampires um,
the other being this being this cript creature. Only possible
things that could be that Supercabra is a vampire. It's okay, okay, okay,
so yeah, that's where the ven diagram overlaps. It's this

(01:34:45):
kind of it's it's got goat like legs actually, but
then it's bipedal, has kind of a human torso and
a sort of lizard meats wolf face. It's okay, so
we're we're virging in like Jersey devil vampire terror. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah,
but it prefers warmer climate. It doesn't like Jersey, and frankly,
I mean me neither, yea who doesn't. Yeah, look, I

(01:35:08):
don't go east to New Mexico, and I don't think
anyone else should either. No, it doesn't. It doesn't care
for Bruce Springsteen, and it doesn't want to live in
New Jersey, so it stays out west. But it's been
reported all over the world. Actually. Now, the a couple
of interesting things about these supercabra is. One is that
people have found them, especially in Texas. Right, are you

(01:35:28):
familiar Robert with Texas blue dogs? No, okay, I go
tell Robert something about Texas. So this lady, I don't
have her name right down here, she was a Texas nutritionist.
And but we do. By the way, I will say,
when it cames to like cryptids people taught me about
in Texas, it was the tuper cabra. Oh well, yeah,
we mean we're basically Mexico like yeah, yeah, not Ted Cruz,

(01:35:51):
who is the other famous Texas crypted Yeah, but I
like Ted Cruz. This this tuper cabra had actually been
to a farm and had been ripping out the throats
of these animals, right, And this lady had a problem
with with the animal's throats being ripped out. And then
one day she finds the corps in which she presumes
to be a chupercabra. It is hairless, it looks kind

(01:36:13):
of like a dog that has pronounced glands on its bumps,
on its back, I guess, and it has thick blue skin.
So what why would you do, Robert, if you, if
you were living in Texas you come across a dead
chuper cabra, I mean, fry it up a little bit,
you know. I hadn't even even some green chili. Throw
that ship on there and just kind of haven't even

(01:36:36):
make sense that one didn't even hit me. But yeah,
having yeah, I know, there was a couple of taco
spots we went to in Texas, which that might have
been what was going on. Yeah, you just get whatever
kind of me done man or meets meat. Yep. So
that's not what this lady did. She was a nutrition
its preaps, so she was a little little worried about
the nutritional content. She had it stuffed and it's in
her living room today. Okay, okay, it's just like a

(01:37:00):
boy like what like, what what is it? Well, that's
an interesting question, isn't it? Gary's It is an interesting question? Yes,
what the what the blue dog seems to be? It
is some kind of hybrid of a Mexican wolf and
a coyote that has some kind of mange, which has
made all its fair fall off. Nearly all of the
Chooper cabras are are some sort of canine with mange,

(01:37:22):
because mange makes it look like a fucking monster. Yeah,
so what like if you saw a giant sphinx cat,
you would also think that's a cripta Yes, yeah, and
especially if they've been ripping the throats. Are you animals, right,
because these poor coyotes and feral dogs and search is
uh so weakened by the main so they can't prey

(01:37:44):
on wild animals, and so they tend to come Okay, right,
it's pretty easy to catch chickens if you can get
into the coop, right, because they've got nowhere to go
or to catch goats, and so unfortunately, what's happening is
that these dogs, these various canids are getting Maine and
they are unfortunately too weak to hunt, and so they're
killing things like captive goats and chickens. And that is

(01:38:06):
where the tupercabra miss comes from. Going back to the
bipedal tupercabra though, it's very interesting. That sounds a little
bit more fun. Yeah. So, in the year before the
tuper Carbra was seen, there was a film made in
Puerto Rico and it was called Species Oh man, Yeah, okay, okay.

(01:38:27):
So unfortunately, the the original eyewitness reports which began the
year after that film was released, Yeah, this I've heard.
They all perfectly described the creature. It's got the spines
on its back, Radford. Radford is a person doing right
In the book, Radford said, the resemblance between the creature,
which is called Sill in the film and the tuper

(01:38:49):
cabra is really impressive. So yeah, the old quadrupedal tuper cabra,
it's a dog with Maine. The bipedal tuper caabra seems
to be exclude if Lee explained by this this movie
and people's feelings about United States colonialism in Puerto Rico,
specifically the number of defense facilities and labs in the

(01:39:12):
un k Rainforest, and their feelings that maybe something like
this ship could come out of one of these US labs,
because if the US was developing a terrible creature that
sucked the blood of people, it would absolutely do it
in one of its colonial properties. Right, Yes, that entirely
makes sense. So there's there's in a sense to you,
per Carbre, according to Radford's theory, gives a physical manifestation

(01:39:34):
of this feeling of disgust with the the United States.
And I got a couple of other cryptids. I was
going to talk very briefly about the Beast of Procter Valley,
and then I want to talk about the curse of Body,
which is a curse, not a cryptid. But first Robert
do you know which what will not ambush your life
stock and rip its throat out? Um, I mean like

(01:39:56):
a like a good sheep dog wouldn't do that. That's right,
and that's why this so it is presented by border collies. Wow,
finally we finally got the big deal with the border collie. Yeah,
that's as real complex. That's good. Yep. Just use promo
code Robert Evans when you're buying your border collie. Tempt
and off. Just walk up to a border collie and

(01:40:18):
shout my name and it's face, try to grab its
food away from it rapidly too. That's a good way
to get their attention and see what happens. Refused to
be herded. Yeah, so see if it likes that. All right,
we're back. I hope you've all got your border collies
because this this next, this next crypted is it's a
little local one. Okay, So they're crypted a bit like

(01:40:39):
the Tubercarbo all across the country. But the one that
we have closest to San Diego is called the Proctor
Valley Beast. And now to understand the Proctor Valley Beast,
I think you've got to understand Proctor Valley. Proctor Valley
is exactly the sort of dirt road that you go
down when you're sixteen years old when you want to
go somewhere with your date, pound a few beers and
get away from your parents. Right, these kind of exist

(01:41:02):
all over the country, all over the world probably, and
there a little closer. They're close enough to know about,
but far enough away to seem weird and distant. Right,
And Proctor Valley is a gravel road and you can
drive down at a regular cub. It's pretty washboarded. There's
no lights, there's no street lights, nothing like that. Right,
these days, your greatest danger when you're driving, riding a bike,

(01:41:25):
or walking or driving down Propert Valley Road is the
Board of Patrol absolutely hauling ass in one of their
Ford Raptors, which they seem to have obtained. And I
will never understand their love for the Ford Raptor. Yea,
it is. I don't know how much those costs, but
it is an obscene amount of money to spend on
a pickup truck. Well, it's also like, look, if I'm
going to be out in the in the middle of

(01:41:47):
nowhere and trusting an off roading vehicle, my first pick
is not going to be the Ford God damn rap.
Well you've got to buy American robot. Yeah. But their
border control of course, they're driving forwards, unbelievable. Yeah, well
they always have a predator drone again, it can come
rescue him. Yeah. Yeah, the border patrol and steroid abusers
in my old neighborhood in West l A. Shaking hands

(01:42:08):
over the Ford raptors. Yea, Ford raptors with illegal things. Yeah,
Ford raptors. The car you can only drive if you
have adult onset acne caused as a result of objective
hormones into your fucking thigh every night. They's had a
lot of them in l A. Coincidentally. Yeah, we already
need one for you know, getting down Beverly Hills. But
not the good hormones, like the ones you you steal

(01:42:30):
from the horses blood. Yeah. Yeah, the hormones you take
when you're wanting to be more matchup but maybe not quite,
not quite achieving your gender insecurities. Okay, So legend has
it that young couple headed off down Proctor Valley Road
one night and their car broke down, so the young
man gets out. This is a male female couple and

(01:42:51):
he's going to fix the car, right, And he says
to the lady in a very chivalrous way, that she
should lock the doors so she's safe. Right. That's last
she hears him. So she assumes he's gone off to
get some help. And she nods off, and she's got
the doors docks very safety knots off and she's a
woken by a kind of scratching sound and the winds howling.

(01:43:12):
Every time the wind blows is a little scratch on
the roof. Scratch scratch, scratch, scratch, scratch scratch, right, wind noise.
I'm not going to do the wind noise. And she
starts shooting herself right. She's very scared now. Scratch scrat scratch, win, win, win,
scratch scrat scratch. And she stays there till sunshine when
she's son up. When she's woken up by the good

(01:43:32):
people of the San Diego Sheriff's Department San Diego Sheriff's
Department of shouting their pointing guns, said they're doing their thing.
Why are they doing that? Because her boyfriend is hanging
upside down, dismembered from the tree above her, and his
nails are catching the top of the car. Every time
the wind blows him right, he's been killed by the
product valley beast. Now, the product Valley beast is is

(01:43:54):
an animal of kind of nondescript shape and size. The
in the seventy the local radio DJ organized a search
for the Propta Valley beast. Right, people went out at night.
Previously the prompt vality beast. Most of the stories it
kind of looked like a kind of winged, bipedal half
human gobbling creature. It changed it form in the nineteen

(01:44:17):
seventies when people conducting it's just kind of a teen
radio thing. In the nineteen seventies, right, people conducting this
search reported finding a deranged cow. Okay, the cow was
probably not directed. The cow was just sleeping. Yeah. I've
known more cows than most people. I grew up on
a cow farm. I've seen them behave in a variety

(01:44:39):
of ways. I've never seen one appeared deranged. That's because
they're moving very quickly. Sometimes they're scared, sometimes they're sick.
Deranged as an interesting because cows don't really have enough
going on up there to be deranged. Because you didn't
grow up in the United Kingdom in a certain period
of time, Robert, when our cows became mad. Well, but
that's still I've I've seen cows that have mad how disease,

(01:45:00):
and they're like, they're ill, but there I don't know. Yeah,
they're not like yeah, yeah, that's getting the name of
their eldest daughter and lest they lose their way home
going on violent rampages. They're asking where their husband, who
died twenty three years ago is when they wake up

(01:45:21):
in the middle of the night. Anyway, senile cow they
have to go to. They go and live on a
farm when they got all the cats. Why you haven't
seen him, Robert, I sure do. Like that young Ronald
Reagan that my cowboys. Yeah, yeah, they they get. They get. Oh,
they forget things. They vote for Donald Trump, they do
a fascism. That's what happens to cows is the only

(01:45:41):
ways cows can die. Otherwise they live very happy and
fulfilled lives in the countryside. So why why do we
have this PRODUCTI Valley bes right, Why is there a
mad cow that murdered a young man who was it
was out late that with a young woman. No one,
No one knows who this young man is, right, I
did to trauma best to find reports of any murders

(01:46:02):
in Proctor Valley. And of course it won't surprise you
to learn that we have in fact discovered dead bodies
in Proctor Valley, because unfortunately, Proptic Valley is just a
few miles from the border, and and I've spent quite
a lot of time out in that area, and that unfortunately,
the people that we are finding then in Proctor Valley
haven't been killed by deranged cow or a bipedal beast,
but in fact by the elements rights people trying to

(01:46:26):
cross the border and find a better life for themselves
and not making it as far as the dirt road
which leads to a small town, which leads to a
big road, which leads to a big town that is
close to there. And so what the Proctor Valley Beast
is a myth that serves to tell kids to not
drive down dirt roads late at night on their own right.
It's two kids, fun your parents. Yeah, absolutely, fucking send it.

(01:46:51):
Your mediata can handle it. Get off the road, do
some drifting. What's the worst that could happen? Maybe if
you're out there, take a gallon of water. Uh, And
maybe maybe I'm not going to say that because there
might be a crime. Yeah, we can cut that. I
was gonna say, a handgun with a single bullet in
case you get stuck off road, a silver bullet and yeah,

(01:47:13):
and a nail to hit it with. So the last,
the last curse I want to get to you is
the curse of Body State Historic Park. Do you know, Joe,
what at is? Robert? No, When you said Body, I
thought immediately about the movie Point Break. Okay, I haven't
seen it. Oh well that's okay, that Garrison you've seen it. No,

(01:47:34):
point I'm sorry, I forgot this is the Point Break.
This is an audio medium. Yeah, I can't shake my head. No, No,
I'm not seen Point Break. You haven't seen Point Break?
Oh my god, Oh my god. I watched the filmmaker's previous,
far superior film that will not be named. This is
that like one person will get who Well, we're gonna

(01:47:56):
have to watch Point Break. But there's a guy named
Body on it and he is kind of a crypted
interesting so there Body has a bit of a problem, right,
Body is an abandon all those those banks. Anyway, this
story does involve some robbing, Oh good, Yeah, but have
a bit of theft on the podcast So what happened
in Body is Body's got a problem, right. Body has

(01:48:18):
a problem specifically with mail, because almost every week when
the rangers from Body travel into town to get the mail,
they have to collect half a dozen or so little
packages containing little things like rocks, pizzas of wood, fragments
of pottery, or coins. And all of those little packages
have letters attached to them. And I'm going to read

(01:48:38):
from some of those letters. Please find enclosed one weather
beat an old shoe. The shoe was removed from Body
during the months of August. My trail of misfortune is
so long and depressing it can't be listed here. Another one.
You can have these god forsaken rocks back. I've never
had so much rotten luck in my life. Please forgive

(01:48:59):
me for ever testing the curse of Body. Okay, so
what we got here, what we got here is a curse, right,
just a good old fashioned If you steal something from
the town, the town will come back and hurt you. Right. Yeah,
And so Body popped up in the late nineteenth century
gold rush rights in between Mono Lake a Lake Tahoe.

(01:49:23):
They it's named after a gold prospector. There was some
gold found there in fact, at its height, Body hosted
around ten thousand people, right, And for those ten thousand people,
there were sixty saloons, which is a pretty good ratio.
There's multiple documented gunfights on the main street and Body
it seems like the stereotypical wild West town that after

(01:49:44):
the gold rushers are over, it wasn't such a great
place to live, so people abandoned it. And it's now
managed by the California Park Service, right, And the California
Park Service curates this ghost town in arrested decay so
that people can come and see this little slice of history.
And there's a lot we can learn from these, like
these places that have been abandoned, right, we can learn

(01:50:05):
a lot about the history of everyday life, like what
things do people have in their kitchen? Why with this
next to that? Why is there a knife here? Why
is why the beer bottles kept here? There's a lot
that historians can learn over time that they might not
find initially. So it's important to keep these things in
really pristine condition. Right. The problem that they had was

(01:50:25):
once they opened the park, you could just walk around town. Right,
It's not like a museum. There aren't a little ropes
that there aren't plexiglass diviolence keeping you away from stuff,
and people think that as an invitation to steal ship,
and steal ship they did so. The park's ranger, who
I cannot find the name of anywhere, but at some

(01:50:48):
point a park ranger giving the walking tours around Body,
started telling people about this legendary curse. And this curse,
he said, made it so that anyone who took anything
from Body would be pursued by bad luck for the
rest of their life. Didn't really think anything of which,
didn't want people to steal ship, right, And as a result,

(01:51:09):
hundreds of people who had stolen things from Body started
returning them in the mail. Right. They're blaming everything from cellulitis, cancer,
failed relationships, so on the thing that they stole from body.
That this would just be funny if it wasn't for
the fact that every single one of these items has
been stolen from a protected site. Right. The Park Service

(01:51:32):
has now set itself up with this huge administrative burden,
which is reporting a theft for every single shoe or
piece of glass or button that's stolen from body. So
it's taking up a huge in order amount of their time,
and they no longer will speak. I've tried to reach out.
I didn't get a response. I did. I did drop
them a Facebook message on their page, trying to trying

(01:51:54):
to talk to someone about this. But they no longer
talk about the curse because it's created such a burden
for them, filing police reports to all these buttons. This
is the actual curse that they did themselves, Like this
is this is how most curses actually work. That you
just actually like the effect is what you turned the

(01:52:14):
thing into and now you're forced to all the police
reports and that's the actual effect of the curse. Yeah,
I think it's wonderful. I think it's great that they
made this this rod for their own bag. You know,
you know what won't curse you with cancer or sell ulitis? Garrison,
I cannot. I there's there's a lot of weird stuff

(01:52:35):
that ever excellent mobile will give you cancer. So yeah,
well the gold that we're about to plug, that's totally
totally safe. You can huff that gold, you can melt
it down, dip your hand in, get a gold plate
at hand, totally fine, lick it, lick it, pop it.
You know that's that to Garrison. Sure, shame was incredibly

(01:52:56):
popular when I was a kid, it was like everywhere. Alright,
we're back and having all received our little bags of
gold for that plug we did. Yep, I have mine
right here. I like to keep it with me in
case the ship hits the fan. I'm buried. I've buried
mine in the middle of the Organ desert. Smart, I've

(01:53:17):
buried a couple of things in the middle of the
Oregon desert, none of them gold. Well, that was a
big sense on your definition of gold. Yeah, Bigfoot's arm pit,
that's what you buried out in your definition of that
guy started a barbershop in whatever. Continue Okay, yeah, yeah,
we don't need to talk about that on the podcast.
Thanks do. We don't want any more Robert's felonies on

(01:53:41):
on Maine, since only a felony if the police find
the body. M that's true, But maybe you could put
put some sh it out there about a curse related
to the body. Yeah, sure, I give it some Maine
ya and then stuff it. So why why do we
have curses encrypted? Obviously partly because it's just sucking fun,

(01:54:03):
and partly because some of our beliefs, right like if
we if we look at Dirk him or what dirkhim
thought religion worth religion is kind of an outgrowth of
society that unites people based on a moral code. Right,
and functionalists more broadly in sociology, believe that these beliefs
serve and function in society. And I think a lot

(01:54:24):
of these things help us explain things that we can't
otherwise explain, or give a more palatable explanation for things
that we don't care to explain, right, or things and
and like in nearly all of these cases, there are
things that rip children away from their mothers. There's another

(01:54:45):
Mexican like shape shifting, which that ripped children away from
their mothers. Right. Unfortunately, there are things that ripped children
away from their mothers, and your taxpayer dollars pay for them. Right,
But it it works a little better to explain things
that we don't that don't fit with our other systems
of belief through Like if if we fundamentally believe right

(01:55:07):
that that I know that that the world is good
in capitalism is wonderful, and that gradually things will trickle
down so that everyone gets richer of the rich get
richer first, it can become very hard to explain the
state of the world unless you're a member of the
Conservative and Union As Party of Great Britain and Northern Ireland,
of course, and so instead we create these external things, right,

(01:55:28):
these things that go bump in the night, So sometimes
they can be a proxy for external forces, right. The
tuper Cabra in a way kind of explains as we
get closer to nature and nature pushes back on us
a little bit, that why that happens, right, rather than
just saying, oh, funk, we've given all these cooties Maine.
How that? How on earth are we in a state

(01:55:48):
where there's a blue dog walking around the The tuper
Caabure also serves as a way to kind of personify
for people in Puerto Rico, either consciously or unconsciously, that
the terrible impact of the United States. It's only lives
on there right, which it's not very hard to see,
and even the Proctor Valley beast right that, so stay
away from this dark road near the border late at night.

(01:56:10):
There were reasons to stay away from there, but unfortunately
there are there are also reasons to go there and
try and help people who are genuinely suffering, and lots
of people I know going go and leave water out
there So these curses they kind of like credit scores, right,
they're not real, but they can sometimes ruin your life. Um,

(01:56:31):
and so sometimes it's just easier to pretend that it's
magic doing that rather than this overarching global system which
is not very nice. And that's kind of where I
want to finish up. I guess is this. These are
ways to explain things that we can't always explain, and
that's that's sometimes okay because sometimes it can be hard
to confront these things. You've got anything else you want

(01:56:53):
to say about cryptids, Robert, I don't know. Um. I
think if you're in an industry that's adjacent to illegal
drugs and you murder someone in the woods, it's probably
a good idea to blame it on Bigfoot. So that
would be my advice for our listeners is to blame
your crimes on bigfoot. M hm, I don't know. Do
you guys believe in Bigfoot? Let's let's end by talking

(01:57:16):
about that, like like actually like believe in the physical
ape like thing that's been dustly undiscovered that rooms in
say ape like Garrison primate. I think doesn't necessarily mean
ape like sure primate probably, and I do I do

(01:57:37):
do not do not think that there's a physical one exists. Now.
I think, like we've mentioned before, like the words you know,
you can say like a curse isn't really but it
can still have effects based on how we talk about
it and how like we can kind of make it
real by our own actions. And the same thing like
I don't think Bigfoot of the primate exists, but as

(01:57:58):
a cultural symbol that has him packet base. It is
real in some way. Um, but it's not like not
like except for I would say it is real in
a physical way. Um. And uh, have you seen a
big foot robber? Are you gonna just it's this way
you drop in your big foot? I actually, I actually have.
I've seen a couple. I've seen a couple of large

(01:58:20):
animals out in the woods. You've seen weird in the woods.
I don't think I'm not comfortable calling it a bigfoot,
but I am weird weird things in the woods certainly. Certainly. Yeah,
I've seen a lot of weird things in the woods
and all of them were bigfoot, as far as has
anyone has ever been able to convince me. Um. And

(01:58:42):
you know, when you get right down to it, isn't
that what Christmas is all about? Yes, half happy Halloween
and happy Halloween everybody. Yeah. Oh oh no, there's that

(01:59:14):
monster coming to kill me with his fentinel knife. Ah,
it got me, what a bummer. Welcome to Welcome to
Spooky Week when we're talking about all of the scariest
things a podcast with foreshadowing, that is foreshadowing. That's right,
twent Deputy Garrison Davis just fentanel by being near it

(01:59:36):
on the seventeen knock as. Yep, it was very scary,
very very very spooky. Yeah. Ah, it's good. It's good too.
It's good to be It's good to be back with
Spooky Week. All right, So this episode, I believe Chris
has something very special prepared for us. Yes, so this

(01:59:59):
is just an we are talking about one of the
most immediately recognizable and enduring symbols of Halloween and one
of the things that I've had to spend the most
time cropping out of party invitations when I was sending
them to kids. Oh no, we're talking talking other other
iconic Yeah, well this is the one, like like specifically,

(02:00:19):
I just spent a lot of time cropping this out
of I fucking like party invitations people, because if like
you're you're in you're in your like fucking shitty Christian suburb.
And if you send a kid home with an invitation
that has a that has a black cat on it, uh,
their parents will pull them out of public school because
of the like the rising threat of Satanism. Better to
stick to the tried and true, you know, like put

(02:00:40):
the Uni bomber on it or something. Yeah, you got
you gotta lots of nice stars. Put some crosses on
it instead, but like a cornucopia mixture. It's like called
like a harvest festival or some bullshit. Yeah, oh yeah,
harvest festival. Yeah, come to my fucking Pentagram party or
your party sack. So yeah, we're we're talking about the

(02:01:01):
black cat um And ironically, the black cats association with
witchcraft is actually this is the Catholic Church's fault as
our many only bad thing they've ever done. They even
created Protestantism. It's a it's a real issue, so true.
So okay, So Pope Pope Gregory the Night make cats

(02:01:24):
eternally feast on his soul. It took took office of
the Pope in twelve and six years later in it's
in in twelve thirty three he issues his first papal bull.
Just this is This bull is called vox in Rama
and Fox and Rama is essentially like it's a giant
anti Witchcraft bull that is designed to like what do
you mean by bull like people? People? Bulls are these

(02:01:47):
like orders basically that are like declared by the pope
and they turn into sort of like they have this
sort of legal status that there there they determined what
sort of church doctor in church positions, because it's it's
basically like it's like it's like the it's like an
executive order for the Pope. Okay, all right, and they
can just do this and so they do this a lot,
and yeah, this this is the sort of anti Riitchcraft

(02:02:07):
one because he's trying to rally support for like stamping
out a bunch of heretics in Germany for the crime
of like not believing in Catholic doctrine and giving all
their money to the pope. So this bull like directly
links cats to Satanic rituals. There's this whole thing about
like half cat like half people. We are. This is

(02:02:31):
what we are. Back to iconic Transgirl Halloween imagery we circled.
There are no new moral panics. This is a fucking
furry panic and like twelve thirty three, it's it's amazing,
it's cat girls kill God. Yeah. Unfortunately, the product of
this is that you know, like this, this, this, this,

(02:02:52):
this space from here's it's off to the races, right,
black hats have become associated with witchcraft and then sort
of in general with bad luck, and you get this
whole sort of like you know, crossing a black cat
like bringing bad look and this is really sort of
devastating real world effect on cats. Like there are mm
hmm yeah, like I mean like like throughout your like
from this point on, like periodically they're just mass killings

(02:03:14):
of cats in Europe because like these people are fucking
barbarians and savages who like should never have been allowed
to like leave their stone huts. Um. When I was
getting a while ago, when I was getting some childhood cats,
we were talking to the cat Agency and we learned
that they don't allow people to adopt to black cats

(02:03:35):
during October because people either buy them as props and
then like to get rid of them or just like
abuse them. Um, it's it sucks. It's like an actual problem,
and are we going to get to the Great Cat Massacre? No?
What is the Great Cat Massacre? The sounds like that

(02:03:55):
sounds like a sequel to that to that mouse Sherlock
Holmes movie that Disney made. It's extremely dark version. Yeah.
The Great Cat Maskers a book by Robert Danson. It's
like a it's a very click. If you're doing a
history graduate degree and you're reading like these sort of
histories of everyday life or like histories of popular laughter,

(02:04:19):
you will read The Great Cat Massacre and he details
how like basically in France, I can't remember when, but
these printers apprentices were like the apprentices lived with the
printer right, and the prince's wife also had a bunch
of cats, which he cared for much better than the apprentices.
So they got mad and started doing cat murders. They

(02:04:41):
put the cats on trial and convicted them of witchcraft.
Wait wait, this was like a judicial murder. Yes, yeah,
they sent it the cats to death by I think
they hung them or something. Oh my god, did the
cats have like a defense attorney? Like? What a witch? Well,

(02:05:02):
you're sup, you're supposed to have an advocate at a
witch cat trial so one would hope, but unfortunately. My
guest though, is if you're probably gonna get another cat,
which is like not a great defense attorney. No, they
don't get a single fuck. I don't know they could.
They could really funk up your face or something if
they just you know, when close out. I don't know
if the cats had a defense turned. It's an excellent

(02:05:23):
question if someone's read it more recently than me. This
is reminding me of that that great poster someone took
from my vets office that was like fighting cats. It's like,
don't fight fair or use drugs one. Yeah, yes, but
you know, okay, my piece of advice to you is
don't fight fair. Yeah during these drokes. Yeah, it's great,
it's it's good. It's it's good general advice. And put

(02:05:46):
him in your Halloween sweets. Yeah yeah, foreshadowing. Yeah. So,
according to a study from the Journal Animals, black cats
have the highest rate of usan eustn Asia and shelters
and have lower rates of adoption, Like, have the lowest
rate of adoption among all our colors, which is like
extremely fucked up. And it's also like the number of

(02:06:06):
cats that we euthanize every year is just so bleak.
It's very sad. Yeah, so that funk the Catholic Church.
This is their fault somehow, However, Comma for millions of
people across space and time, the black cat has met
something else entirely. This black cat, with its fur raised

(02:06:27):
and back arched, is the bringer of the class war,
the herald of the new world, and its name is sabotage.
And okay, song about it. Yeah, and before, before before
we get into how the Sabo tabby or the Sabo
kitty became associated with sabotage, we have to talk about
what sabotage actually is. And the reason we have to
do this is because sabotage like does not mean the

(02:06:50):
same thing now as it did when the term was coined.
So if you look at sort of the modern definition
of sabotage, it's it's almost entirely focused about the physical
destructure of pretty like here's here's Mary Webster's definition. For example,
destruction of employer's property such as tools or materials, or
the hindering of manufacturing by discontented workers. To destruction or
obstructive action carried on by a civilian or enemy agent

(02:07:12):
to hinder and nation's war efforts. And okay, so part
part of the reason why sabog why everyone thinks about
sabotage is sort of like a physical act of destruction,
has to do with the sort of folk etymology of
you know where the word sabotage came from, which is
supposedly dates back to these like early French workers throwing
these wooden shoes called sabots it's like machines to break them.

(02:07:33):
And the problem is that this sort of just isn't true. Um,
like the there there's no direct evidence that anyone sabotaged
machines by throwing your shoes into them, which seems like
a kind of a kind of inefficient way to grab
a stick, right like you you need your shoes to
walk on. And the other thing is that people who
put cats on trial, they weren't always thinking in straight lines.

(02:07:56):
That's true that well, at least this is the eighteen hundreds,
so who hopefully we're slightly past the cat trials. But
what's interesting about this is do you ever think about this, Okay, Like,
sabotage is a French word, right that the French shoot
the word for the shoe is sabot like it doesn't
start up until like the late eighteen hundreds. It literally
just means someone who like it means to make a

(02:08:18):
wooden shoe, Okay, but it turns out it's actually it's
actual orision is more interesting. This um. The term sabotage,
as you know, like the sort of like worker action,
was invented by the French anarchist of Meal Pigot. I
don't it's po u g. I don't know how to produce.
That doesn't matter, pochet I, I don't know, sure, okay, okay,

(02:08:43):
I slightly I feel slightly bad because he's one of
the few good frenchmen him and sent him and Fuco
the only philology. So Pago is like he's just like
the up. This guy is extremely French. Yeah, but he's

(02:09:04):
also he is he is in the he's in the
period of French cool, which is to say he is
um he he he is an he's an anarchist, he
is a cynicalist. He is doing all of the ship
um and he like he invents. The term sabotage is
part of this report to the c G T. S
I eight seventy nine conference in some cities name I

(02:09:27):
can't remember, so the c g T S is a
really weird unions. It means c g T means like
the General Confederation of Labor of Workers basically. Um. Actually,
it's really funny because because because of how similar like French,
Spanish and Portuguese are, there were like sixteen thousand unions
across like twelve countries that are named the CGT. It's
it's it's it's they're all either the CGT or the

(02:09:48):
u g C because they're all just like confeder something. Yeah,
so the French c GT is like a very very
weird union. They're they're they're like they're the only union
of ever seen that has at various points been an
anarchist union, of communist union, a liberal union, and a
social democratic union. And it also like the thing they're
famous for sort of now is the fact that they

(02:10:08):
sat out like every revolution that's ever happened in France.
Like they're they're they're probably most famous for like telling
people to like basically signing a pact with the government
and trying to get people like to go back to
work when sixty eight was happening, and you know, and
the the usially about like the c g T, the
CTC is still around today. They have like seven hundred
thousand members or something like. They're the second largest union

(02:10:30):
in France. And I don't know, it's interesting. So they'll
go on strike for like pension stuff, but they won't
go on strike to like abolish the class system and
sort of how I put it. But in the late
eighteen hundred, early in eighteen hundreds they are a very
very radical cynicalist union. And Emil Pigou, who again like
like anarchist par excellence, is like their vice secretary, so

(02:10:57):
to go, like invents the investorer. Sabotage is a way
of trans eating basically the Scottish term that I okay,
I apologize for my Scottish pronunciation. I don't I genuinely
don't really have any problems with Scottish people. I think
the term is go connie basically, which means go slow
um shirts to go. From his pamphlet sabotage, that's um

(02:11:20):
like his explanation of like what's going on here that
the first part of it seem quoting a British pamphlet.
That's about what Docatti is. If you want to buy
a hat worth two dollars, you must pay two dollars.
If you want to spend only a dollar fifty, you
must be satisfied with an inferior quality. A hat is
a commodity. If you want to buy a dozen of

(02:11:42):
why is it a dozen of shirts? Okay, I don't know.
People wrote weird in the early night entwids. If you
want to buy half a dozen shirts at fifty cents each,
you must pay three dollars. If you only spend two
dollars and fifty cents, you can only have five shirts. Now,
the boss declares that labor and ski will or nothing
but commodities like hats and shirts. Very well, we answer,

(02:12:03):
we'll take you at your word. If labor and skill
are commodities, their owners have the right to sell them.
Like the hat seller sells hats and the habitasher sells shirts.
These merchants must give a certain value in exchange for
an equivalent value. For lower price, you will have an
article if either lower quality or smaller quantity. Give the
worker of fair, fair wage, and he will furnish you

(02:12:23):
with his best labor at its highest skill. On the
other hand, give the work an insufficient wage, and you
forfeit the right to demand the best and most of
his labor anymore of when you can demand a two
dollar half for one dollar. The gokani consists then and
systematically applying the formula bad wages, bad labor. So yeah,
but basically what this is like, it's it's gocani is like,

(02:12:45):
it's it's it's a kind of strike where it's it's
kind of like it's kind of like a slowdown or
there's another kind of striker's name I forgetting right now
where it's like you you you you like exactly follow
the rules, work to rule. Yeah, yeah, that's it's it's
kind of like a work to rule strike. It's basically like, okay,
so you're up being paid enough, so you just intentionally
work really shittily and just keep working slowly and badly

(02:13:07):
until boss is paying you more. And so this has
been a big thing in in Britain and to Go
like sees this and he writes basically like a paper
like recommending that the CGT starts using this as a tactic.
But sure he's trying to find a French word for it,
and he's like, I don't know how to translate this,
and so what he thinks of there's this sort of like, well, okay,

(02:13:27):
so here's where it gets messy, because it's like there's
like a couple of versions of the story. One version
of it is like work as if you're being like
hit with a wooden shoe. So I wake up every
morning and turn on my podcasting Mike and a clog
just flies in through my window and smacks. That's why, Sophie,

(02:13:49):
Uh yeah, there's there's these there's these slinger shots to
set up outside of my windows that launched these clogs
right at my face every more lariously, hilariously, we are
going to come back to slingshots in So there's this
thing in France, like so people people with wooden shoes

(02:14:10):
basically generally are like peasants right there, people from burrel areas,
And there's this whole sort of stereotype in France that
like in this period and like the like there's like
these people with their wooden shoes and they're like peasants
and they're like ignorant and they're bad at working and
like and so basically what Pago is the other thing
that the other theory of what's happening here iss he's
doing he's like reversing this thing right, he's like, well, okay,

(02:14:32):
here's this, here's this like stereotype, like workers working badly.
And he's like, okay, no, what what if we did
this on purpose? Like what if we were intentionally just lazy?
And it's important to note that, like and Pago does
this and it's writing that, like so he invents the
word sabotage, but like he sure it's hell, didn't invent
the content have sabotage here here, here's from the pamphlet

(02:14:53):
Sabotage again. Sabotage the former revolt is as old as
human exploitation, since the day man had the no ability
to profit by another man's labor, Since that very same
day the exploited, the exploited toiler has instinctively tried to
give his master lesson what was demanded from him. In
this way, the worker was unconsciously doing sabotage, demonstrating in

(02:15:13):
an indirect way the irrepressible antagonism that raised capital and
labor against one another. Okay, I'm I have to I
have to do a call out post on poor poor,
get poor gy whatever. Um. That was very sexist, he said,
every man. That's true, that's not women should also be

(02:15:34):
forced to work um non buying. Their people should be
forced to work um eight hours a day, hopefully more so,
the fact that he's just making men work is a
little sexist Garrison doing a Hillary Clinton there, doing a
Glenn Greenwall there. That's right. You have to see it, ah, weirdly,

(02:15:56):
weirdly in terms of in terms of canceling of Frenchman
a French dude for sexism, like pretty mild, not gonna
lie at least problematic frenchman, don't. He probably did do
something horrible. I just didn't see it when I was
reading about it. But you know, such as such as
the the guy he invents sabotage. Um, so okay, so

(02:16:17):
we have sabotage as like you know, and this is
an interesting about this, right when when when Pigot was
first like defining the word, right, like he literally is
just talking about like labor slowdowns, right, and you know,
very quickly sabotage comes to mean other things. And here's yeah,
so so here here's again from this same Pamply he's

(02:16:39):
quoting the secretary of a railway union who's like on
strike for the right to unionize. And this this is
what the railway union secretary guys says with two cents
worth of a certain ingredient, union utilized in a peculiar way.
He declared, it will be easy for the railwayman to
put the locomotive and such conditions as to make it
impossible to run them, which fucking absolutely absolutely based eighteen

(02:17:05):
seventies French from road union secretary. Ah, it's great stuff.
It's actually funny because like she's she's just like out there,
just like saying this, and like every modern union has
like a giant disclaimer in their things, saying like we
do not endorse the destruction of machines. Like yeah, the

(02:17:26):
fucking based French guys like no, no, no, no no,
Like we we are actively threatening you to destroy like
every locomotive in France if you do not let us
form this union. This is why, this is why my
organizing with the I Heart Union is solely based on
us planning future terrorist attacks. Yeah, we don't. If we
don't get our way, the Hollywood sign will never never

(02:17:48):
be the same again. I've already pulled sugar into the
I guest time of my podcast recorded, correct, that's gonna
work out for it. Unfortunately, the gas tank of the
podcast is like my stomach. So we're kind of it's
it's it's just as a fact of it is actually

(02:18:10):
pouring sugar into things. Yeah, why, I'm hiding under your
bed with a funnel right now. Some sugar. On the
other hand, Garrison, do you know what else will put
locomotives in such a condition that will make it impossible
for them to run? Uh? The is this an ad
break the products and services that support this podcast? Yeah,

(02:18:36):
the fucking the rail companies are making the trains not
be able to work. The trains are too long. They
are too long. Okay, dynamite. The answer is dynamite, and
we're back. Okay. So from here, the definition of sabotage
starts to sort of expands um very rapidly. Here here
some the I w w in about what sabotage is.

(02:19:00):
I'm so curious sabotages is. Sabotage is a destruction of
profits to gain a definite revolutionary economic end. It has
many forms. It may mean damaging the raw materials is
that destined for a scab factory or shop. It may
mean spoiling. It may mean the spoiling of a finished product.
It may mean the displacement of parts of machinery or

(02:19:21):
the disarrangement of a whole machine where that machine is
the one upon which other machines are dependent. From material,
it may mean working slow, it may mean poor work.
It may mean missending packages, giving overweight to consumers, pointing
out defects and goods using the best material where the
employer desires a alteration, and also the telling of trade secrets.

(02:19:45):
In fact, it has as many variations as there are
lines of work. This is this is so fascinating because
sabotage definitely now is way more associated with like Earth first,
like the left tactics, and this is like very labor focus,
like that much hodges done by the people who are
working at the factory or place of production on the

(02:20:07):
products that they're working on. It's it's that that is
extremely fascinating. Yeah, And I think there's another thing too, right,
because like there is the sort of physical aspect of it.
But again, like this was created as like like as
a term of sort of like like anarchy, like specifically
like syndical its political struggle, right, Yeah, and as that
term like it's a lot of what they're talking about
when people think about sabotage is just like strikes and

(02:20:27):
like labor slowdowns, and that that part of the connotation
of sabotage has just like completely faded and to get
into sort of like how that happens. It's and it's
so based on addressing actual material changes as opposed to
like a lot of sabotage now is almost like performative,
like even like even like the left type stuff. It does.

(02:20:48):
It does get a thing done, like yes, this thing
did burn down, but they're gonna build another one. It's
it's all. It's obviously it's it's for kind of like
spectacles built into what the actual goal is and for
this kind of stuff, it's actually it's about like it's
more like improving labor conditions. It is. It's basically and
like there's a lot of this that is this that
is specifically designed not to be like very notable, Like

(02:21:10):
I mean there's there's a very common thing. Yet strikes
like in the US, even even like sort of like
conservative truck restrikes will do this thing where like okay,
so the truckers will go on strike and then they'll
hang like they basically like hang like fragments of metal
and shipped from like the top of overpasses so that
if you drive another truck under it or like funk
up the top of the truck, and that's like that's
kind of stuff. Isn't like it's not designed it specifically

(02:21:31):
not designed to be public, right, It's designed to be
something that like okay, like it's it's, it's, it's it's
it's it's about like directly materially hurting the bosses over
like a long period of time, not just like ones
like single action. You do it and you run away
and hope and hope to never be caught. It's like, no,
it's gonna work slowly for two years and it costs

(02:21:51):
my boss like thousands of dollars in process. I mean
there there, there's some there's something like okay, so I
I guess but here So I've been I've been doing
some episodes. Next week we're going to be about Lula,
who's like the sort of like great uh like originally
labor leader and turns sort of like am I blanking

(02:22:13):
on the name of a friend of the people of Haiti. Yeah,
we're going to get to that. That's what he tended into.
That's nothing else. Yeah, yeah, but he he's a former
president of Brazil maybe be the next president of Brazil. Also,
you know, he has this interesting sort of like she
doesn't want of labor organizing under the military rettatorship. And
he has this really interesting lot because during the military

(02:22:35):
kadership and Brasil, there's a bunch of these sort of
like like underground leftist parta military groups and like like
his brother gets like arrested by the military and tortured horribly,
and he has this really interesting line about that talking
about these contestine groups, which is like, okay, like if
like if you guys had like talked to like the
two thousand people who work in this factory instead of

(02:22:58):
doing this completely condestinely and not even telling your own
family that you're a communist, Like maybe if you talk
to people like they couldn't have grabbed you off the
street and just like arrest like it's like disappeared you
overnight because there would have been people there and and that,
and that's that's the thing, Like that all of this stuff,
like this kind of sabotage relies on like you and
like everyone else around you also doing the thing, and

(02:23:19):
that makes it harder to crack down on because you
just you you know, you sort you have critical mass
and yeah, and that's something I think is is very
different from sort of modern sabotage, which is yeah, based
on these sort of like either either like okay, we're
doing this and we're gonna get rested, or it's like
here is like a secret cell in like the woods
in Oregon and no none other people and other people

(02:23:42):
in this group will ever see each other again after
they like spike this tree. I wonder if it has
its roots and like, um, I don't know when these
like some of people in front existed. But like in
Britain we have the Luddites at around a similar time,
who has sometimes seen as one of the air reach
you know, like trade unions, right, who would sure break
break boilers and the industrial revolution. Yeah, yeah, Britain still

(02:24:05):
incidentally makes it a capital crime to destroy a boiler
or like a break. Well, it's a way of break
because what the like the ned Blood is just like
fictional leader of the Luodites, right, like this giant general
who's supposed to come and they were like, oh it's
ned Blood, mate, and I don't think about it what
you're talking about. They like they made it a capital

(02:24:28):
trying to try, but to try and break up specifically
that right to what like Chris is talking about, like
like it's obviously like personifying the forces of labor as
as a giant general is not something that continued throughout
space and time, but that solidarity where where like someone
in the factory fucked up the boiler, everyone in the
factory has something to gain from sucking up the boiler.

(02:24:50):
So as long as we don't tell anyone, the boiler
stays sucked up. Yeah. And interesting, like actually like specifically
writes about what he's writing abo stuff, the stuff and
the like the eight thirties, but like he specifically writes
about like the little thing that that that kind of
labor struggle in Britain is like one of the one
of the sort of like forebearers. Yeah, yeah, a thing

(02:25:11):
on them. Yeah. But so this stuff is sort of
like yeah, a lot a lot of this stuff is people.
Is people in the age like the eight nineties and
like hunters like looking back on those groups and Okay,
so I want to sort of pivot a little bit,
which is because so we've mentioned the iww UM and
the iww are the people who are basically like responsible
for associating sabotage with the black cat. And it's sort

(02:25:36):
of unclear how this happens. Um here's how the modern
IWW talks about and SHEW thousand eleven it which is
like the sort of like sabotage cat picture. It was
probably conceived by IWW member Ralph Chaplin, most famous for
penning the IWW labor anthem Solidarity Forever, who produced many
of the IWW's early silent agitator graphics, which themselves had

(02:26:00):
close association with hobo signs described elsewhere in this gallery.
If i W a culture, we can cut that part.
Although today the cat has a general association with the IWW,
sometimes even as its mascot, its original purpose was as
a code or symbol for direct action at the point
of production, specifically sabotage. Indeed, the cat may have been
may even have been chosen due to the convenient word

(02:26:22):
place sabo tabby, possibly even a direct inspiration from mel
Blanc's characterization of bugs bunny. Often bugs bunnies often mispronounced sabotage.
Sabotage by really should be as like sabotage, so i

(02:26:42):
was described in the section of sabotage must be emphasized
that the latter did not mean destruction of machinery or equipment,
although I I really think that's partially like that the
modern IWW being like, hey, don't sue us like this
and this. The thing with the the old i WW
is like you'll you'll get you'll get like states from
my w W leaders who are like, uh we I

(02:27:04):
we We're not the guy. We don't like our our
strikers aren't the people who break machines. There's another group
of people who are like here also, but who are
not us? Who are not us? Who are door do
who are destroying things? I never do crimes great stuff,
Only my identical twin Harrison does. Cry. Yeah, it's amazing

(02:27:29):
how many symbols of industrial labor come from the wobblies,
Like the raised fist also comes from the IWW, right,
Like it's incredible this global impact. Yeah, well, I mean
like and I think there's a there's a reason for this,
which is that like, okay, if if you're if you
are a capitalist in the early nine, like this cat
is the spookiest ship you've ever seen, Like, like it

(02:27:51):
is terrifying, Like they are like groups of wobblies, will
like try to step off a boat and people and
like the like sheriffs will just immediately start shooting the
him like it is to this day. I think I
think that WW is the only leftist group in the
history of the U S outside of Puerto Rico that
has ever taken in American city, which they did in
the UH. It was a very small town on the border,

(02:28:13):
but they actually actually took American cities like during the
Mexican Revolution um and that Mountain maybe United mind. Well,
they didn't actually like that's the thing though, They didn't
actually like fully like drive drive out like okay, yea yeah,
like like they like that that WW like actually fully
like took over these towns. It was like where the

(02:28:34):
fucking running this down? But you know, but what this
thing that starts happening here is you get like like
people are really desperate like that there's still there's a
bunch of houses, Like there's a bunch of like old
mansions from this period, like Late Age hundreds, early nighte
hundreds like in Chicago that are are all built in
online in one street. And the reason they were all
built that way was because they wanted to be on

(02:28:54):
on the road to on the road to the nearest
military base so that when the revolution come they came,
they could run and hide. Like this is how scared
peace people are. And the like bosses start offering workers
things as a compromise that like most people today like
think our socialism like they have, Like you start getting
companies that have like into that have their own workers
councils in them, like like here here is here is

(02:29:18):
the workers council will give the workers council budgetrol over
how the shot flow works, like please don't overthrow us.
Like Rockefeller like develops the idea of putting workers on
corporate boards, like specifically as a way of trying to
buy off workers and stopping them from like sabotaging their
way to revolution and just like stealing all of Rocketfeller's
property for the working class. And you know, we've been

(02:29:38):
talking about about a lot about this and sort of
like the American context and like sort of the French
and English context, but you know, partially because the ademology,
partially because of like who's involved with like the specific
black cat thin but like syndicalism, which is the sort
of like this ideology of using democratic unions doing a
general strike to like seize control of the means of
production and ending the class system. This is fucking everywhere.
This is these these people spread like wild fire, like

(02:30:00):
I think, I think probably the most famous cynicals other
than the IWW are the CNT in Spain. But like
you know, the Italian in in in nineteen nineteen seventeen
nineteen nineteen, like Cynicolas and Italy like very nearly pull
off a revolution during the period that becomes known as
de Benni a Rosso or like the two Red Years,
they wind up being betrayed by the Italian Socialists and

(02:30:21):
that's how we get Bussolini but shocked. Yeah, who who
who could have guessed? But you know, there there are
enormous cynicalist unions like everywhere that there's there's the huge
cynicals unions in both Brazil and Argentina and sort of bizarrely,
both Brazil and Argentina both have these sort of like
general strike anarchist revolutions in both nineteen seventeen and nineteen nineteen. Yeah,

(02:30:45):
it's wild like the cynicals are everywhere. There's there's like
their cynicalist like tin workers in Brazil. There in Venezuela.
There's an AWW section in South Africa there, it's like
cynicalas in Egypt. They're in Japan like it. From from
this period, from like the late eighteen hundreds through really
even the earlier, so the early nineteen twenties, like these

(02:31:06):
people are a pretty significant section of the entire international
labor and socialist movements. And every word syndicalism goes this
black cat goes with them. Now. Unfortunately, as as vagina
hunters wear on the this the influence of syndicalism begins
to wane as a combination of both intense post World
War One repression and you know as this as reactions

(02:31:26):
sort of like red scary reactions to uh, the Russian Revolution,
and also the sort of rise of like Lennin as
communist parties who have their own doctrines that don't like
rely on sabotage in the sort of theoretical sense that
syn nicolism does. And this this has like this, this, this,
this has a bunch of sort of malign effects on
what people think sabotage is. Unfortunately, but do you know

(02:31:50):
what else degraded the use of sabotages of political and
ideological weapon. It's it's it's the advertising industrial comes, not
the bastie boys, and we are back. But wait, there's
still more sabotage because unfortunately, you know, as as the
sort of like the syneclist movement is declining and like
every single one of these people is getting shot. Uh,

(02:32:13):
there was waiting in the wings. Another type of sabotage
that we've talked about a lot on this show. And yeah,
this is ecological sabotage, which I'm okay. I also see
people calling it eco taj and like, I'm sorry, I
love I love you, I love you all Forest of Fighters.
That is a dogshit word like echo tag, like come on,
like this is this is not this is not actually

(02:32:35):
a good word. We could do better. Um. It's also
called monkey wrenching after the the the work of ecological
activists in veterate racist Edward Abbey, that's right, and sexist.
Don't don't let him off the hook. Oh yeah yeah, yeah,
old white dude Edward Abbey. Yeah he's a he's a

(02:32:55):
very like this is a very like Pacific Northwest kind
of guy. That's true. Yeah, yeah, it's like guys who's
white really likes forest does not like brown people. He
loves the fucking desert like yeah, yeah, desert boomers loves
some med with Abbey. They pay it. I was in

(02:33:16):
Moab recently and like the amount of people selling like
first editions of Edward Abbey books without like entire like
first edition to like Earth First Gathering posters and stuff
like thousands. Someone who's on an off road safari. Oh nice, Yeah,
that's a copy of the most maybe a first edition. Actually,

(02:33:37):
do you do you want to tell the crowd what
this book is about? Gang? Yeah? Oh, it's a group
of people who have some fun times. It's people who
travel around. They play with some trains, um and some diggers.
They play with diggers, yes, yes they were, they were diggers. Yeah,
I don't know, even just having fun times. Also, there's

(02:33:59):
something that I I did not know for a while,
but Edward Abbey also wrote one of the adaptations of
Lolita to play on stage. Oh shoot, I forgot about that. Yeah,
I just un problematic guy doing fascinating stuff. He discubs trees. Yeah, well, okay,
so he has the one genuine the unproblematic thing he
wrote this you're another book called EO. Well okay, so

(02:34:21):
he's involved in the writing of this. There's a lot
of there's a lot of people have tribute to this,
but he's involved in the writing of a book called
Eco Defensive Field Guide to Monkey Wrenching, which is this
like unbelievably intricate and detailed guy to doing everything from
like tree spiking power lines to breaking ranching equipment, to
sabotaging vehicles and aircraft, of freeing animals from traps, she

(02:34:41):
defeating surveillance, the sinking ships, to a section that is
called only quote fun with sling shots. Even in Key
wrench Gang he goes into great detail about how to
start a caterpillar like bulldozer, like like a lot of
it was like how to do terrorism, but like in

(02:35:02):
a novel, like it's fantastic. Yeah, well it's like that.
There's a whole genre of like of post World War
two French films that are this with prison breaks where
it's like as a bunch of people people who like
been in concentration camps and like had broken out of
them are making these movies that are like just really intricate. Okay, okay,
this is how you make a lock pick, Like this
is this is how you figure out guards like shift changes,

(02:35:24):
like this is how you like take out these boards.
It's great stuff and it's it's what one of one
of the better kinds of things and eco defense, Like
it's not the most banned book I've ever seen in
a world that goes to, yeah, it's it's not okay.
So on the one hand, like the FBI is in
a weird position because they can't like technically ban it

(02:35:45):
because the US has this thing called the First Amendment
that like you can sometimes winning courts. Here's here's the
the Ego Defense Handbook was not written by Edward Abbey.
It was written by David Foreman. Yeah, but people'll, uh
there was a foreword in the book written by Edward Abbey. Okay,
that that's the he wasn't. I think I think he

(02:36:07):
was involved with the publication with it. Like he's somewhat
like David Foreman and Edward Abbey were friends. They were
they were Abby Abby Abby. Abbey is less involved with
this insofar as he like Foremen, like the FBI tries
to like entrap him for writing this book. Like like
all most of the people who like action sections to this. Yeah,

(02:36:27):
like all these people like people start yea the FBI
tries to arrest him on other stuff because unfortunately this
book doesn't violate traffic law, so they can't arrestue for it.
And okay, I do buy it on ab a lot. Yeah. Yeah,
it's on the Anarchist Library for free. Don't buy it,
Jeffrey Bezos your money. Yeah, so it turned on a

(02:36:47):
VPN used tour and go to the Anarchist Library. It's
it's in this category of books that are like like, okay,
when when when you have your Noble band books list,
they don't include. There just two kinds of books the
don't include. One is they don't include books where it's like,
well they didn't technically ban the book, but they tried
to arrest everyone who wrote it. And then too, they
don't include Alfredo Banano's arm Joy, a book for which

(02:37:07):
she was arrested, thrown in prison and kept through well.
The Italian government, on orders from the Supreme Court, like
took every copy they could find, lit it on fire
and giant bonfires. The other thing with that, you could
have hand sam book even if they did not arrest
the owners. I've talked with a lot of green anarchists
from who who were active during the green scare, and

(02:37:31):
they definitely arrested people just for having having like like
if like if you had it, that was evidence that
you were a terrorist, Like it was something that like
you don't talk about, you don't put your fingerprints on it, um,
because having this book could get you in trouble, Like
you don't like it's it's it's it's there's there's multiple

(02:37:54):
ways to ban a book, one of them being if
you have it, they're gonna try to charge you with
like terrorism enhancement stuff might also trying to cause a pretext. So, yeah,
fun book. Yeah, and so, and like I think, yeah,
calling it like I think with so, I think a
lot of the stuff that people were doing that I
called monkey wrenching or sort of like ecological sabotag just

(02:38:17):
called eco terrorism today because people have just well there's
like a whole loop of this, right because there's there's
there's there's the fbig the green scary growing, like, all
of this is terrorism. We're going to use the fucking
entire like giant like military appc actually built up to
like go after about people setting free animals. But then
but then like like at some point and this is
this is I think thing. It's very interesting in the

(02:38:37):
last sort of like five ten years, like people who
weren't really involved with the original stuff decided that eco
terrorism was cool. And now everyone on Twitter just talks
about eco terrorism all the time, which is like they
talk about interesting term. Well they don't and this is
the thing. Those people don't do it, and it's like
come on, like but on the other hand, there are

(02:38:58):
a lot of people we should maybe caveat for our
British listeners that you absolutely can be prosecuted for having
that book, and multiple people have been prosecuted in the
last two years. And the Anarchist Cookbook. I mean you
could still be oh yeah, it's like they they can't. Yeah,
even if you're an American you can still get they've

(02:39:20):
still gotten people for having the book. Like it's it's
it's that's that's that's interest thing about how the censorship works, right,
is it like like you are allowed to be a
capitalist and sell it, but you're not You're not allowed
to buy it because you a terrorist. Yeah, wonderful stuff. Yeah,
in Britain, you can't even things like the Anarchist Cookbook,
Like people have been prosecuted and anyone should be prosecuted

(02:39:42):
for the Anarchist Cookbook because because it's dogshit anyone. Pretty Yeah,
I've always wanted to do like a deep dive into
the history of all the ship that's been blamed on
that book and yeah, all the people who have And
it's funny too because it's not like the Army literally
doesn't publish fucking Field Manual, but you could just buy
it a store that like has all the same ship. Like,

(02:40:03):
but you know, terrorism is when we do it and
not when they do it. That's right, So I want
to talk about so like this whole thing is is
a product of like this, like you know, this is
what sabotage it turns into. Right, And there's you know,
and some of the people stuff that like is being
done here isn't really that destructive. Like a lot of
people like you know, like people people like sitting in trees. Right,

(02:40:24):
there's a lot of stuff that sort of like civil
disobedience that is like you know, including this stuff. But
then there's also like but you know, but but like
stuff like spiking trees is where you I think you
and it's basically destroying construction equipment is where stuff you
start you start to get this sort of like modern
understanding is sabotage is like a thing that like an
activist does to like a piece of machinery. But you know,

(02:40:45):
like there's a lot of things people do, like people sabotage,
like whaling ships. But then also I want to sort
of close the episode with this, is that like there's
a lot of people in a lot of other places
in the world who do, like who do a lot
of stuff for echolog school defense that doesn't get put
under this framework where for example, there are groups like
the Niture Delta Avengers who are like, Okay, fuck it.

(02:41:06):
If if the Nigeria government is just going to execute
ecological activists, we're gonna pick up guns, we're gonna blow
up pipeline pipelines, and we're gonna start shooting, and you
know there there's ground in between, like the sort of
like we're gonna do sabotage and we're going to like
do arms struggle like an Ecuador for example, one of
the responses you see to sort of like a tax
in indigenous land by capitalist developers, this indigenous groups being
just like fuck it, We're doing an uprising, and then

(02:41:27):
tens of thousands of people like spend three weeks fighting
and fighting cops in the street until they stop. And
you also see stuff that's like it's kind of like
because one of the other specifically in France, they do
this all the fucking time, like one one of the
older sort of like workers like sabotage tactics is just
like you kidnapped your manager, and like people do this
like now in France, Like it's just like, okay, you're

(02:41:50):
the manager. You can't leave until you greet it or
demand like but like when people will do this in
ecological settings, well like a government sending a government minister
to like negotiate something that would be they'll be like,
I'm a manager around and people will just be like, okay,
like we're kidnapping you, Like we'll let you go when
you stop doing this. That's good good stuff. Yeah, And
I think and I think like and these tactics also

(02:42:11):
sort of spread, like for example, in Chile, if you
look at like if you look at their sort of
like like Milton ecological struggles, especially like indigenous the Pochay resistance,
like that is a place that like more than anywhere
else have ever seen love setting construction equipment on fire,
like they really they really like lightning backos on fire.
It's it's it's good stuff. Um, but you have having

(02:42:33):
sort of said all of this, like the fact that
sabotage is synonymous was sort of like property destruction, is
I like, I genuinely think like a triumphal of corporate
propaganda because the original meeting of it right there and
the original politics behind it, which which is this like
very explicit class politics of like fuck it, Like if
we are not going to get the actual like products

(02:42:55):
of our own labor, we are either not going to
work or we are going to take it from you
or where you and to make sure that you also
don't get the products of our labor. Like that's so
so just ord of gone. And that's that's that's very
sad to be because it's it's it's a good politics
and we need more of it. And yeah, all of

(02:43:16):
this sort of is to say that workers have no
reason to fear the black cat, but boss's owners and
capitalists live in fear. Your time will come happy Halloween happy.
How the cut fences somehow I didn't somehow I never
mentioned bolt cutters in here, which is sort of wild.
Oh yeah, actually so some something something I learned on

(02:43:40):
a job once is that like, okay, so so like
bart Razor wire is really scary stuff like it has
like it has like anti clouding agents in it that
like I've like on the wire, but I've gotten passed
a lot of right there. Why yeah, well, but I
mean the thing the thing about this right is that
like you could just cut, like it's actually really easy
to just cut, like the chains on the chain ink

(02:44:00):
so many people people have very strong like you can
just sort of do this and like this and this
is this is useful for a lot of things, like example,
if you have to break down sections of fences and
fences in your lawn, like, yeah you can. You can
do lots of fun things with boat cutters. Keep the kids,
oh tin snaps, keep the kids off your loan. Yeah

(02:44:47):
that's right. It's spooky weak. So it can happen here
those with ghost noises if you hadn't realized, And that
must mean that today we are doing a podcast about
mass graves. What's going on? What the fu happening in
the background? Running sounds, running water. We've summoned a fucking spirit?
Where's that coming from? I don't hear it. I don't.

(02:45:09):
I don't hear anything. Guys, you're just you don't hear it.
It's gone now it's the podcast where we convince Garrison
there's a ghost in the zoom machine. It's okay, I
could I could like do a I could do a
lesser bad as you go to the pentagram? Who really
want to? It's fine, I'm not worried. I like the pentagram.

(02:45:30):
That's what I'm tattooing on my children. Oh, nice me too. Yeah,
you haven't done the forehead there like a coward, you've
done there? Yeah? No, I mean elbow. Elbow is the
way to go. So, Garrison, what do you know about
mass graves? Um never been to one to my knowledge. Uh,

(02:45:50):
they seem like they're not great. Usually they're a signifier
that something something not great happened, a little bit of
a noopsie. Uh yeah, you can be a way to
hide one's mistakes. Certainly, where would you have yet to
guess where the biggest mass grave in the world is?
Where whe would you go for? Well, I know there's
a lot of big ones in Canada. But if I'm

(02:46:12):
going to guess, they call those schools in Canada and yeah,
I would say, like Russia, maybe he has the biggest
mass grave. I don't know. That's just like off the
top of my head. No, it's not. It's you've got
a guest sting. Oh No, I know where the biggest
cemetery is, but I guess that's very different. Where is
the biggest cemetery? I Rocky Rock has the world, and

(02:46:34):
it's supposed to be haunted. So this one is not haunted.
But as far as I can tell, it's the biggest
mass grave in the world, about thirty four thousand people. Um.
And this is in Spain. Spain does not get enough
credit for it. It's mass graves. In fact, second only

(02:46:55):
to Cambodia in the number of mass graves that it has.
Spain has about a hundred and fifteen thousand people who
were forcibly disappeared and are still buried in unidentified graves,
but about thirty five four thousands of them are buried
in the place we're going to talk about today, which
is the Via de los Caidos or the Valley of
the Fallen. So the Cailros is not only a mass grave,

(02:47:20):
but it's also a Catholic basilica. It's also the largest
basilica in the world, and it was built by one
Francisco Franco, who was the dictator of Spain from the
nineteen from nine. And it was also his own grave
until when Spain dug him up, put him in a helicopter,

(02:47:43):
flew him across the country so that no one could
like car bomb or protest or otherwise desecrate his corpse,
and buried him in another grave. So that's what I
want to talk about it today. The vaa los caido,
it means value of the fallen. Right. Incidentally, there's a
film called Valley of the Dead, which I said, anyone

(02:48:05):
else seen this? Was it just me who said to
curse himself? Okay, just me? More of the shame. Yeah,
many more people should be enjoying Spanish Civil War zombie
fiction movies in which both sides come together to fight
against the greater foe of the undead. Not actually a

(02:48:26):
thing that happened. The value of the undead. Yeah, it
could be called the value of the undead, but they didn't.
They didn't quite get that far. Some of the least
spectacular dubbing I've ever seen in a film like I'm
used to watching, like English stuff dubbed in Spanish. But
I don't think I've before seen something Spanish dubbed in

(02:48:47):
like really cringe American English. It's not it's not great. No,
it's not. But in a sense it is also great,
but in you know, in a sort of enjoyably bad.
But yeah, it is. It is very funny. It's on Netflix.
It's free malon Nazis. I think it was called in Spanish,
but Valley of the Dead in in English. People should

(02:49:12):
check it out if they want a different spooky film
towards his Halloween. So let's talk about the Valley of
the Fallen. It was built under Franco's direction as kind
of this national act of atonement for the Civil war,
and at first he said it was going to be
memorial to both sides, so that's like Valley of the Fallen.

(02:49:32):
But well, first it was supposed to be a memorial
to the martyrs of his glorious crusade against the Reds,
against Adlinism, against Satanism, against all the things that are
bad according to Franco's but it wasn't. Really, it was
just a giant monument of Franco's national Catholic ideology, which
kind of fuses in Nhure and the church in this

(02:49:53):
one massive ball of terrible ship. It's designed in the
neoclassical style, which fascists of fascist loves the neo classical
style because they can like draw these direct lines between
themselves and the empires of antiquity, right and except without
the fucking paint, because their cowards and fools look white
because they're tiny babies. This is true. Yeah, yeah, they

(02:50:17):
never did the thing where they like bedazzled their statues
like the Greeks and the Romans did. Most of shame,
someone should bust in there with some glitter spray paint
and tarted up a bit. I haven't done that, unfortunately.
Look returned to tradition. Make your statues look cringe. Yeah,
that's how they're supposed to look. Don't worry, the statues

(02:50:38):
do look cringe, but unfortunately they're not shiny, which is disappointing.
It it's built of granite, though, which I guess is
kind of a return to tradition. It was built very
near the Escoriale, which is like the resting place and
palace of the Kings of Spain, and that's because Franco

(02:50:59):
wants to row a link between himself and Philip the Second. Right.
Philip the Second was the King of Spain, who, at
the time that he ruled, ruled every continent that was
known to European people, or ruled territory, and which is great,
which is not a problem, of course, it's in fact
good and an inbred old Spanish dude was ruling over

(02:51:22):
places that he couldn't really conceive of and had never visited,
and there are no problems with that, okay. So work
begins on Vadlos Cairos in y right, it's a year
after the end of the Spanish Civil War, and Franco
decrees that he's going to make this memorial to the
glorious national crusade against the Reds, and unbelievably he wanted

(02:51:43):
work to be finished in a year, which obviously he's
not operating in like reality because he's a piece of ship.
But it took twenty years to build, right, So it
was off by yeah, big construction, understand Francisco Franco. And

(02:52:03):
like King Philip, he could have plunder the entire labor
and capital of the America's to build his folly, and
instead he relied on the forced labor of about twenty
thousand prisoners of war. These were former Republicans, right, and
they were forced to build a church. Obviously, many of

(02:52:24):
them did not like the church, and we're not really
very fond of building what is now the biggest Catholic
cathed in the world actually, and it has the biggest
cross in the world, which it shocked me that the
biggest cross in the world wasn't in the United States,
but I'm sure Ted Cruz is actively working on it
as we speak. Yeah. I feel like if you walked

(02:52:48):
around my hometown and told people at the biggest cross
in the world was a Catholic one, they would immediately
spent twenty trillion dollars building a bigger one. Yeah, I mean,
the only thing that could convince them defund the police
would be yeah, yeah, owning the Catholic cross. Maybe we
should put that, we should enter that into the discourse

(02:53:09):
on true social or something that Franco, of course, is
not the only person buried there. Right right next to
Franco in the center of the Basilica is his friend
Jossi Antonio Primo de ri Veda. U Primo died exactly
thirty nine years before Franco on the twenty November and

(02:53:31):
he died because he was killed by the Republicans, which
is based on good and and he has just little
gravestone there next to Franco, which of course has not
created any problems. After Spain it sort of began to
transition to democracy and Franco died. It's of course not
a bad thing to put a giant monument to fascism

(02:53:54):
and francois m and nobody is going to turn up
there and do a fascism in the years afterwards. Oh yeah,
it's a little bit unfortunate. So there's every day at
eleven o'clock a priest says a mass, and at the
mass you can generally find old people who will sort

(02:54:15):
of mill around for a while and then quietly start
doing fascist salute, which is not which is not great. Yeah,
to be comfortable first, yeah, well you got yeah, you
gotta get like, you gotta example the vibes, and then
do a fascism and the vibes here are probably not great.
They also have acquire any acquire of small children who

(02:54:39):
sing why because fucking what? Because everything about this is cursed.
There's a film, there's a film about these old children
who go to a quote unquote traditional school at the Basilica,
which I can imagine it's great, and they learn all
kinds of wonderful things about critical race theory. Yeah. So
the priest also says a for the fate of Spain

(02:55:01):
and the blessed blessed Martyrs, which really really is wonderful
and perhaps points in the direction of the complicity of
the Catholic Church in looks of the war crimes that
we're going to talk about today. Second consecutive episode where
the Catholic Church possible for the whole thing. Wow, I
can't believe the Catholics did anything bad. No, it's shocking,

(02:55:24):
isn't it, given their history of being kind and good
and generally respectful towards people they disagree with. So true, James, Yeah,
no problems with the Catholic Church. So this particular church
is hun It's just a giant hole in a granite ridge,
right again, a giant hole cup by the Fourth labor
of Prisoners of War. It's called the Value the Fallen

(02:55:48):
because today it houses the remains of about thirty three
thousand people. And this is what makes it the biggest
mass grave in the world. Right. The monuments register includes
many of their names, and it has the motto kaidos
portiosi Espana so fallen for God in Spain, which conveniently

(02:56:09):
overlooks the fact that most of the people there didn't
like God very much and really didn't like the version
of Spain as being presented here either, right, because the
vast majority of them were Republicans, people who would fought
against Franco's idea of Spain and the civil war, and
the bodies that came there really kind of came there
in two distinct waves. And so, like I said, Spain

(02:56:31):
has about a hundred and fourteen thousand odd people who
are buried in unidentified grades. Right. The vast majority of
these people are Republicans who were killed by Franco his forces,
but some of them are not. Some of them are Francoists, Catholics,
Carlist other like right wing fascist type people who were

(02:56:53):
killed by the Republicans. Right now, the bulk of those
people were dug up and I identified by the Francois
regime in the time that he was in power, and
many of them were moved to the value of the
Fallen and they're identified there. But the majority of the
people in the Valley of the Fallen were Republican people

(02:57:15):
whose remains were taken without their consent from mass graves
where they were victims of Franco's terror right, and they
were moved to the value of the Fallen to be
some kind of like weird pyramid sacrifice ritual. I don't
have a a complete grasp of Catholicism, but I certainly

(02:57:38):
don't understand this ship two sort of I don't know,
make make Franco's temple more like spectacular and it's very strange.
It's it's it's very cruel, right. I want to quote
from the BBC article in two thousand and eleven that
was written about one of these people, Jorge val Rico

(02:58:00):
so Um Joe Vardrico Canales, was taken from his home
in August n six in the middle of the night
and shot by a Fascist execution squad. His town had
fallen to the uprising and he had been singled out
as a socialist in nineteen fifty nine. His remains were
dug from a well and moved to the Valley of
the Fallen. More than thirty thousand warded from both sides

(02:58:22):
of transferred there on Franco's orders. For me, it's excruciatingly
painful that my father's remained from a place built to
the glory of the victors in the military coups Fausto, Canales.
It feels like a double crime. First when he was executed,
then when they moved his body without our permission to
a place, which is totally inappropriate. H So that experienced

(02:58:45):
Sally is far from uncommon, right between three, Like I said,
about thirty thousand, these graves were dug up. Lots of
these were like shallow roadside's graves. They were wells Some
people were buried in graveyards and they were transferred to
the valley. Sometimes they weren't transferred in their entirety. Incidentally,

(02:59:07):
that's like they did. These mass graves are not well organized.
So like to perhaps give some context here, like these
they began in Spain began exhuming these mass graves in
two thousand seven. Right, there was a historical memory law
past h and they're often just just jumbles of corpses

(02:59:29):
and bones. Right, some of these mass graves contain like
a thousand people. I don't imagine them being like, hey,
we're going to do a mass grave, now, you know
what I mean like there was kind of digging a
hole putting bodies in it. Yeah, yeah, it's fair to say. Yeah,
no one made a good plan, which is unfortunate, isn't it.
But yeah, they like they would were they would get

(02:59:50):
all the people who they identified as socialist or feminist
or otherwise objectionable to their vision of spanishness and then
kill them all. Yeah, and then put them in a hole.
He because they consider them to be less in human
and they seemingly seem to have like dived into the
hole and grab some bits and pieces and move them
to the value of the fallen at some point. Wait,
so wait, we like how are did okay? Like? Like

(03:00:13):
what what actually? Like? How are like the bodies in
the Valley of the Fallen like held? Like what arere they?
Just like are they in like caskets? They just dump
them in another hole? No, there are like there are
like various it seems that there are various different like
some of them are in these little stone there are
like these little stone tomb looking things. But I don't

(03:00:34):
think that those actually contain the remains. I think they're
in these various pits. So they just it's it's another
they moved from one mass grade another mass grade that
they build a sacrifice temple over. Yeah, so they're now
beginning to exhume the already exhumed bodies front that. So
they're now digging up the valley of the fallen right

(03:00:56):
to to identify these remains and Catalonia. How is a
d N a registry? So if you believe that you're
it would be like people of our generations grandparents. If
you believe that your grandparents are in a mass grave,
that they were disappeared, then you can register your DNA
And they tested against the mass graves that they're excuming. Well,

(03:01:17):
so that's how they that's how they identify people. And
Christian Do you know what won't dig a mass grave
and throw your grandparents in it? I cannot. Yeah, Black
Rifle Coffee Company. Well I was just gonna go with
Coca Cola. But well that's three options and we're back. Hopefully.

(03:01:43):
There was no reference to mass graves in those adverts,
but we can't promise you that. Sadly, they also can't
promise you that there's mass graves they didn't talk about. Yeah,
that's probably more likely, isn't it. Anyway, Enjoy that advert
for Nestle. Moving on, some of these mass graves have
been identified by a Spanish nonprofit group called Innovation and

(03:02:05):
Human Rights, and they actually have this incredible data set
specifically on the Valley of the Fallen where you can
look up the location of the corpses that are there, right,
so like where did these where the of the remains
that have been identified from, where where do they come?
And three thousand, nine d and two corpses. That's about

(03:02:27):
seventy bus loads of dead people. If you want to
imagine that they came from this small town of Taigona,
which is where I used to live. That's that's not
a big town. I was trying to think of like
a California town to contextualize it by it, but I
think most people would have heard of town sets more.
I this despite being a pretty rural area. The camp

(03:02:51):
to Tarragon that contain contributed about of the corpses that
remain in the valley, and that's probably because it's part
of Catalonia. Catalonia was Spain is a multi national state,
so there are lots of nations within Spain, like Catalonia
and the bas Country being the ones that people are
most familiar with franco particularly hated Catalan separatists, and so

(03:03:13):
as part of this ongoing punishment of Catalonia for like
trying to leave Spain during the Civil War, the franco
Is dug up the remains of the people they'd already
murdered and moved them to a long way from Catalonia.
Right the Vaidelis Gilos is near Madrid. Conditions for people
who built the valley were pretty appalling to the workers

(03:03:36):
and their families lived in these shacks. According to archaeologists
who exhume them last year, Famili has lived in nine
square sharks with no water electricity. They made shoes out
of old tires, and they had no windows or no heating.
Their beds were made of stone, and they and their
children suffered from malnutrition. It's it's not particularly rare for

(03:03:59):
people to have offered from malnutrition in Spain after the
Civil War, this period was called the Years of Hunger.
But even so, it seems like there was particular cruelty
applied to these people, many of whom were serving sentences
for things like forming unions or forming student political movements.
Right like that, they were like they hadn't done anything wrong,

(03:04:22):
that they were the victims of a totalitarian state. So
one of those people is Nicolas Sanchez al Bognos. He
was interviewed being a Catalan newspaper and Nathionale and he
talks a lot about his memories there, and incidentally, he
escaped after a few months with the help of Norman

(03:04:43):
Mailer's sister. Yeah, yeah, yeah, based. She's incredibly based, actually,
like yeah, she she like helped him escape and then
ferried him across the Pyrenees to France, where he escaped
into exile and Argentina lived for decades. And the only

(03:05:04):
good well, okay, I was gonna I was gonna make
an only good Argentinia and exile joke, but probably probably
is actually genuinely worth mentioning that a lot, like a
lot of people who were Jews fled to Argentina to
like right before wor War two, and that's a huge thing.
And you get people like calling them Nazis because they're
fucking dumb as ship and it's like, guys, come fucking

(03:05:25):
like if you can't teble between the Nazi and the
people they were killing, like please stop. Okay, this has
been my interlude about people doing this ship because oh
my god, yeah, maybe maybe don't cast his persions, maybe
do a little bit of reading first, and so yeah,
a lot of people, a lot of them end up
in in Argentine exile. Actually, ironically, Argentina also claimed universal jurisdiction.

(03:05:50):
So what we've seen in the last few years, it's
like Spanish historical memory groups trying to trying to get
people who perpetrated crimes against humanity under Franco extradited to
Argentina to be questioned, which which is also very funny
given that Argentina has his own legacy of crimes against humanity, right,

(03:06:12):
and Spain does his ship too. Actually, Spain claims universal jurisdiction,
and we'll try and like extradite people who have done
crimes against humanity in formerly colonized countries without Spain has
not faced up to its own crimes against his own population.
You know, I will say, I am entirely down for
like intentionally starting some sort of like Spain Argentina like

(03:06:32):
ship fast where both of them like get piste off
with each other and start trying each other's war criminals.
That's really funny. I would be better, I would be
even more impressed to see, Um, are you familiar with
who Balfava Thorn is? See that weird prosecutor guy? Yes, yes, yes, yeah,
who tried to who tried to try US officials for

(03:06:55):
crimes against humanity for the things they did at Guantanamobey. Yeah,
it would be outstanding. I would love to see like
Spain and the United States come to blows over like
their respective crimes against humanity. It would be wonderful, Sandy,
And like in Iraq too, I think he like, um,
what was it called that? The do they call it

(03:07:17):
enhanced interrogation techniques that they were using when they were
like electrocuting people and such. Yeah, so like he tried
to prosecute people for that. Sadly, like everything else in Spain,
he strayed a little bit too close to looking at
the corruption of the Spanish state and lost his position,
which is a shame. He did some pretty chuddy ship himself,

(03:07:37):
Like he very clearly presided over trials where people had
very clearly been tortured and was just like, oh, that's
interesting to see you in the witness box giving this testimony.
I'm not going to note the fact that you've like
very clearly been beaten to ship with a ninth stick. Yeah,
Spain a country with no problems famously and so yeah,

(03:08:00):
Albernos escapes. Actually there's a film called the Los Angeles Barbaros,
the Barbara's Years, I guess, the Barbarian Years, which which
looks at his escape, and he was one of only
two people to be escaped. But people died building the
Valley of the Fallen right and then were buried there

(03:08:21):
in this weird monument to to Francoism. So, like I said,
Spain really hasn't dealt with its legacy of of mass
murder right um. And it never really had a Truth
and Reconciliation commission, never really dealt with the amount of
people murdered after the war. Um. And it's really only

(03:08:45):
in the last like ten or fifteen years at Spain
has begun digging up these mass graves. So um. And
the Pedro Sanchez and the Socialist government they've they've begun
doing more to deal with this. In two thousand and
seven and earlier at his Sourcils government passes thing called
the Law for Historical Memory, and the Law Historical Memory

(03:09:05):
funded and the Recovery of the memory of the Civil
war right, and you can draw very obvious parallels between
how Spain has dealt with its civil war and its
tradition to democracy and how the United States has dealt
with its civil war right, and you will see like
that there is um do you got do you know

(03:09:26):
what voxes? Yeah, they're they're like the insane for a
right party in Spain, Yes, and so fucking cringe, holy shit,
even for the standards of our right parties, Like oh
my fucking god, god, yeah, do they wear silly outfits? Yeah,
I would imagine, so I don't. I don't think. I
don't think there's ever been a picture of them, like

(03:09:47):
where they haven't been in like the weirdest looking ship.
Because occasionally some of the like Spanish fascists, were some
pretty gay outfits. And it's really funny. Are you talking
about the the phone legion, the ones who were like
if Tom of Finland created a military Yes, yes, that
is exactly who I'm referring to. Yeah, okay, yeah, they

(03:10:10):
are not so much like outright fascists as a fashy
military unit, but yes, yeah, it's I know, yeah, absolute
first trap. Just like if people should google photos, if
they haven't seen them. It'll occasionally pop up on like
Twitter or something where people will find these incredibly butch
dudes who like, like, it's not that they've unbuttoned their

(03:10:32):
shirts just so just that their pecks are ripping out
of their ship. No, it's their shirts are not equipped
with buttons because ye like to be in that unit,
you have to be so incredibly buff that you you
start buttoning your shirt from the navel down, and which,
to be fair, is more appropriate in Spain. I remember,
like I used to teach in Spain and then I

(03:10:54):
taught in the United States and like coming back and
being like, oh, I really have to change the way
I dress to be appropriate for an American audience. Yeah,
the to get back to mass graves and away from
tactical first traps. The what Spain didn't have right was
like Franco didn't get hung upside down from a gas

(03:11:16):
station and beaten with sticks in the face. Right, more's
the shame. There's still time, right, his body, his body
is still available for beating. You know, maybe maybe they
wouldn't be the worst thing. But Spain never really faced
its past, right. So in seven and amnesty law was passed,
which prevented any criminal investigation into the crimes committed in

(03:11:38):
the Franco years. Um statues of Franco some of them
were not moved until like the last five or ten years,
and when they were removed, and it was like the
government just went in in the night and scooped them
up and no one really said anything and then they
were gone. And so like Spain has only really really

(03:11:58):
recently entered into this period like that we call its
second transition, and that's like it's transition from Spain began
transitioning to democracy in right, but what we call the
period after that, it's more of a post dictatorship then,
like a complete democratic transition in Spain was still processing

(03:12:22):
as you can see, right, many of its crimes under Franco,
and it's it's really only begun to process those in
the last few years. So that gets us up to
the oh that I think election of Pedro Sanche's right
in the Socialist government and um their decision to exhume Franco. Right,

(03:12:45):
So Franco's Franco's lying in this monument. Right, it's the
biggest mass grave in the world. And on the day
of his death on the twenty February every year. It's
it's a gathering place for fascists. Right, So Franco and
Primo daily Vera both died on the same day, and
fascists and casualists both love this this kind of weird

(03:13:06):
spiritual magic shit and really really yeah yeah, I've heard,
I know there are some books about it apparently, uh
huh yeah, okay, so yeah, it's said that both of
them have a fundness for this stuff. So then both

(03:13:26):
dying on the same day, it's an extremely fucking cursed
thing that has led to sucks. Mm hmm. It sucks
if you if you ever have to go near this
place on the twenty November, which I don't recommend. Oh god,
I could only imagine that must be well, that must
be the worst time. Yeah, because it's all because it's
all of the nerdiest Nazis like yeah, it's like yeah, yeah,

(03:13:53):
it's like if if like nerdy like Nazi internet people
had a real life place to gather and just do
fucking fascist salutes, that sounds like it sounds horrible. The
fascist with a calendar like no, yeah, the calendar who's
like into praying. It's like, yeah, really really really into praying.

(03:14:16):
I'm just I'm just gonna say this, if the if
the anarchists were in charge of you wouldn't be having
fucking stupid, cringe pray fascist meetings. This can be prevented,
then can rise a third time. Sure, but it is
the nerdiest thing ever to think about a fascist like
updating their Google calendar being like, yeah, for all their

(03:14:38):
spiritual holidays where their leaders died, why do they always
celebrate the day that their leaders died. It's always the
weirdest for us. It's a death cut, right, like, like,
like their leader dying, is this is the moment when
they finally expressed the pure core of fascism. That's true.
That that's actually a really good observation that actually is

(03:15:00):
is more on the point than what it should be, right, Yeah,
immortalizing them on that day, yeah, I mean was the
slogan of the did the African the African Army, Like yeah,
I think it spains for a legion actually like long
lived death. And they called themselves like, yes, that is

(03:15:23):
their slogan. They called themselves the what's it called the
Fiances of Death. Yeah, they're they're they're all gay because
they're all married to death, which is pretty metal. They're
also kind of fashy. But yeah, that that that does
really showcase the whole death cult aspect of fascism. Yeah,
you know, you know what it isn't a gay necromancer again,

(03:15:46):
we can't promise. I wish, I wish we could advertise
some more recollect I would, I would be in my element. Yeah,
I've just done an ad read for a couple of them.
Actually I should have should have. Let you know, I
am the so jealous. That's all, that's all I want
out of life. Yeah, please enjoy these gay necromanty products

(03:16:07):
and services. Okay, we're back. I hope you enjoyed that
as much as we did. So. The incredibly cringe and
just boomerie fascist cerelevation on Franco's death and Primo de
Rivera's death on November always happened at the Vidloskidis, right,
they would turn up in two thousand and ten Spain
band like fascist symbolism. But this hasn't really stopped fascist

(03:16:30):
doing fascist symbolism right, including bringing there for land flags,
giving it the fascist salute, marching and to just generally
doing like cringe like where where like our OTC cosplay
meet meets the Catholic Church stuff on the twenty November
of a year at Franco's grave and like there are

(03:16:52):
always flowers on Franco's grave, Like you can't go there
on a given day and not find someone like lamenting
the fact that Franco is dead and they can no
longer just disappear people they disagree with. Right It's ship
And so incidentally an amusing sort of side effect of
this with that, do you remember the storm Area fifty

(03:17:15):
one like Facebook thing? Yeah? Yeah, the right Area challenge
like last year or two years ago, yeah, three years ago,
I didn't a lot longer ago. It does it? Also
it also feels like a very thing. Yeah. So the

(03:17:37):
Spanish version of this was Invade via los Cailos, with
the slogan that like if the state, the state can't
get him, if we get him first. I don't think
this was an anarchist attempt to steal his body, but

(03:17:57):
like massive respect of it was I think to some
extremely online people doing something that they thought was and
actually is funny, which is yeah, like unfortunately it didn't
really come too much because they plan to do this
on the twenty November and in October, Franco's body was

(03:18:18):
removed from the Valley of the Fallen. Okay, see this,
this is this is the thing with all of these things.
That's the same thing with the fucking stuff cony thing.
Like the problem that all of these groups have if
they want to do is they always set their date
too far out, Like you gotta give it like max.
It has to be like two weeks out, because if
it's any longer than that, you momentum, Yeah, you get scooped.

(03:18:40):
So look, I if you, if you, if you, if
you want to seize the body of a dead dictator
and throw them into a canal, you have to move fast.
And that's why I'm announcing that for for November nineteenth.
We're all now, we probably shouldn't go to Russia to
have fun with trotsky body. Should be Yeah, we're going.
He's Trotsky's body in Russia. Yeah, I thought so. I know.

(03:19:03):
I've seen back from Mexico. I have had I've had
friends that have gone places to make fun of Trotsky's body. Um,
len his body. Lenning's body is up for grabs, like okay,
it's just sitting there. Well, I think we should start small.
Let's encourage the fans of the podcast between now and

(03:19:25):
what we got right, but now in eleventh of November, right,
go after Papa doctor Valier, get get him start you
know that, and then move on from there. Okay, it
is it's in Mexico. Yeah, you're right closer to the
sort of geographical heartland, and we don't need to go
into a war zone. So yeah, and the middle of November,

(03:19:47):
we're all going to be going going to Mexico road trip. Yep, yeah,
let's go. You know, I will say there is something
genuinely interesting here about the way that like, okay, so
you look at sort of fascisms, sorry, you look at
fascism's death drive in the way that it's sort of
like treats these money means to death. And then like
you look at the way that every single sort of

(03:20:08):
like like all of this say, socialist regimes, Like it's
not so much that they have a death drive, but
it's like they're like all of them. Like I learned
this recently, Like so I knew that they didn't too,
that they'd like embalmed Stalin, right, and like well they
involved Lenin, they embalm maw. Yeah. They they also learned
they did it to Chi Minh too. It's like it's

(03:20:30):
like they did it's like all of these people, and
it's like there there's there's this sort of weird, like
almost in version of it where it's like like fascism
is based sort of on like you know, like on
on the sort of totalizing worship of death, whereas Stalinism
is like it has this kind of inversion of it
where it's like it's based on like a kind of
like eternal life for their leaders in this also incredibly

(03:20:53):
bizarre way. And then when it be like all of
Europe is determined by previous like talitarian legions, but there's
there's something, there's something orthodox about the way they've done
the dead Russian dudes. So I want to talk about
Franco's corpse a little bit, and then I want to
end with something else, because I don't want to just
focus on Spanish fascists because they suck and I hate them,

(03:21:14):
and I am sad that they are not all dead,
but Franco is. So Franco's family weren't allowed to use
the Spanish flag on his coffin. Yeah, so instead they
fucking got the Franco with flag, right, the old nationalist flag,
which because they have filth, they did that. Instead, they
carried his coffin onto a helicopter. They flew in by

(03:21:35):
helicopter to Madrid, where the services provided over by a
priest who is the son of Lieutenant Colonel Antonio to
head on Molina, the man who led the failed Night
One coup that attempted to topple spaine young democracy. And
great to see this continuation of these elites, right like,
this is a this is a country which has of

(03:21:57):
course moved on completely from its civil warren dictatorship. On
the post off side, Franco is now buried with his wife,
and he is very near to Luis Carrero Blanco, who
people will remember as a podcast alumni in Spain's first astronaut.
And so I was going to quote Vox, but I
won't because they fucking suck and now wants you quote Fox.

(03:22:22):
You should just like throw fruit at them, And I
think that's like that's not an actionable threat, right, just sure, sure,
don't throw like any fruit sort of potentially lethal, right,
like like a large watermelon or something potentially fatal, like
just a banana or if you know, the Vox representatives
like allergic to a fruit you throw at them and

(03:22:43):
gets on their face and they die and it gets
blamed on James. We all get taken into a year's
long lawsuit and then we all lose their jobs. Don't
do that. Don't do that. No blame someone else for that.
You can if you are directing the police to me
in Spain, they can to take me by Twitter DM
by Twitter is at at chopped at Chapel Trappers, That's

(03:23:05):
where you can find me. Yeah, yeah, it sell traps. Okay.
So of course Fox make exactly the same bullshit destroying
history argument and the Confederates make in the United States.
It doesn't make them anymore right because they're in fact wrong.
But incidentally, someone else died on November and that is

(03:23:29):
one boilivant duty right. Unlike Franco, he's not buried in
a monument made both fucking slaves. He's buried alongside other
anarchists in in Barcelona. You can visit his grave there.
It's very cool. You can always meet interesting people hanging
around his grave. And if you're in Bathonia you should
do it. Rutty died in the middle of the Battle

(03:23:51):
of Madrid, like so many other Spanish anarchists. He died.
It's lunclear actually if he died because some and negligently
discharged their own weapon into his back, and which seems
to be the most likely case, or leading a frontal
charge on a machine gun, which which is how so
many Spanish anarchists died because they were so utterly convinced

(03:24:13):
of their incredible like and they're not wrong either, they
were right about most things, but like you get, their
willingness to die for anarchism was perhaps a little bit problematic. Well,
I mean this is this is like a thing across
the whole history of anarchism, like like part one of
the reasons that the Russian Revolution went the way they
did was that, like it's like the sort of like
first crop of Russian anarchists, like the moment the White

(03:24:34):
are formed immediately just went to the front lines and
all got killed and like Lenning and meanwhile letting in
Trotsky are like fucking chilling and letting like sucking Patrick
Grad being like yeah, which exactly what happened in Spain,
right like Ferrara, all these people like get to the
front lines and immediately start killing fascists. Meanwhile tanky people.

(03:24:56):
I was gonna say something else, um, like spending that
time plotting and scheming to from becoming a completely fucking
irrelevant political force in Spain to taking over in a
year and a half because they are the only people
are willing to provide weapons and many of the anarchists
are dead. What were you going to call take people?
I can't what were you going to call? Take people?

(03:25:24):
It just makes me angry, and it's just gonna just
that's that is that is an ovisive answer, etcetera. Yeah,
it's just gonna say scum or filth or British swear
I can't use on the podcast because of fans American people,
which is fine. Um, yeah, it's disappointing. I don't want

(03:25:45):
to be canceled by work mob. Okay, yeah he did
Australian moments. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. I nearly went full Australian, which,
like I've done it before on television and it just
doesn't end well, all right? Uh in Spanish not English
which also Spanish wordy November in Spain this year it

(03:26:08):
will be like what three weeks when people are listening
to this some fascist ship head. If you live in
a town in Spain will be walking around doing shitty
fascist things, and people who live in Spain of course
very aware of this, but I wanted to finish it
said with another thing that anti fascists in Spain doing November.
So on the fifteenth of November this year, anti fascists

(03:26:29):
all over Spain will be gathering to remember fifteen years
without Carlos Palomino. People might not know who Carlos Palomino is,
but I want to very briefly recap his story to
finish up. So on the eleventh of November two thousand
and seven, Carlos Palomino and about a hundred other anti
fascists got on the subway in Madrid to counter protest
a right wing rally and Luca, an immigrant neighborhood that's

(03:26:53):
home to mcgrid's Chinatown today. On the train on the
way there, he ran into a twenty year old Spanish
soldier or say hoss ware estebanners uh Estebanez was dressed
in clothes I I don't want to talk about the
brand actually because you shouldn't hype market Nazis, but the
clothes showed that he was a far right skinhead. Right

(03:27:15):
Carlos Palomino notices Estebanners, takes offense at Carlos Palomino, noting
his Nazi clothes, and stabs him with a machette. Yeah,
he stabbed someone else as well, but unfortunately, Carlos dies
pretty quickly. He was sixteen years old at the time
of his death. He was the only child of his mother,

(03:27:37):
and he lived with his mom, who was separated from
his dad and his grandmother. And it affected his mother,
as one can imagine, pretty terribly right the loss of
loss of her young son, and as a result, his
mother has become a prominent anti fascist activist in Spain.
She founded the Association of the Victims of Fascist, racist
and Homophobic Violence, and ten years after his death, a

(03:28:01):
thousand people turned out and a memorial to him, and
ever like ever since he died, every year you'll see
these massive rallies in Spain of anti fascists. If you've
ever seen do you remember, like a year or so ago,
there was this video going around trip and there was
a group of people chanting like a kiss anti fascist US.

(03:28:22):
Here are the anti fascists. I see such videos on
Twitter all the time, so I don't I don't, I
don't know it like, it gained relevance among people who
I've never seen engaging with Spain in any before. And
it was a huge rally one thousands of people came
out to remember him, and I'm sure thousands of people

(03:28:44):
will this year too, Like we've Spain's like it's Spain's
right for a long time tried to couch itself in
terms of the neoliberal center right. Yes, so like the
Partio Popular would see itself in terms of like maybe
the Tories in Britain or Editories are pretty pretty mental,
but like this this kind of neoliberal European right. Yeah,

(03:29:04):
and it it broadly sort of wanted to see itself
as part of this like post fascist European right. But
in recent years it's just taken this this swing towards
the hard right, like Vox has emerged, and even the
Partido Popular, which would have seen itself as like neoliberal right,

(03:29:25):
have tried to like outbox Vox and they're now like
just openly standing Francoism again. And in this climate, anti
Fancism has also seen itself resurgent. I guess we're an
anti fascist identities in Spain and more relevant or more
common than they would have been ten fift twenty years

(03:29:45):
ago something like that. And as a result, these memorials
for Carlos who become bigger and bigger for a year,
and so I wanted to end with a letter his
mum rate to global anti fascist collectives in two thousand
and eleven in our memor reason, all the anti fascist
victims will always exist who are fighting for a world
of equality, dignity, freedom and social rights were killed by

(03:30:07):
the ideas of intolerance and fascism. The memory will exist
for all those victims who, due to their different cultures,
religions or sexual orientations, were murdered by the same murdering
hands who hate those who are different. Now it's time
to continue working against hate. That is the best tribute
Weekend offer. Their struggles were not in vain. We will

(03:30:27):
continue the path, although they are no longer with us
in every action of anti fascist struggle. They're inside and
in each and every one of our hearts, which I
thought was really poignant. His mother is amazing. Yeah, this
whole thing fucking breaks me. Like I was think this
was a time when like I too, was being a
teenage anti fascist in Spain, and this is someone who's

(03:30:50):
like almost exactly my age and obviously isn't alive anymore.
And yeah, i'd encourage people to read more about him.
I normally share these events on social media when they happen.
And yeah, this is extremely sad and continues to be
extremely sad because Spain refuses to face up to its past,

(03:31:13):
the dictatorship. You can look at where Franco's grave is,
organized a protest and execute it within two weeks and
toss him in the river if you want to be
very proud of you. That is absolutely a legal thing
to do. And I would be prosecuted in Spain, but yeah,
it did. Any Spain has prosecuted everyone from sucking clowns

(03:31:36):
to puppeteers. Now it's now, it's serious. When you start
coming out of the clowns is when I I start
getting personally consulted. We need to do our episode on
clown Block soon, don't we? We do? I can put
on I have clown block right behind me, okay, yeah,
and then the British police will send someone undercover in

(03:31:58):
your clown movement for five year is who will marry
one of you? And let me let me be a
silly gesture, leave me alone, Nope, not in Britain. It's
a crime, all right. Uh, okay, that's been a podcast crimes. Okay,

(03:32:49):
welllcome to the fine Spooky Week episode. Hi, look, this
is this is it could happen here. This is our
last Spooky Week episode for this year, and we're gonna
be talking about something extremely spooky and Halloween themed. Rainbow
fentanyl the newest deadly threat hiding in your kids trigger

(03:33:12):
treat basket, or so you would think if you are
a frequent viewer of Fox News or really any local
cable news channel, and that rainbow fentonnel in particular is
troublesome because of its appearance. This is treacherous deception to
market rainbow fensonel like candy. This is every parents worst nightmare,

(03:33:37):
especially in the month of October as Halloween fast approaches.
That was Fox five News, New York and d E
a special agent Frank Tarantino, giving a press conference on
the rainbow fentanyl scourge sweeping the nation. It's not hard
to see how this narrative became the new protect the

(03:33:57):
children pearl clutching panic. It's a natural extension of the
police officer touches sentinel and spontaneously overdoses lie that local
news across the country have been pushing for over a
year now. More on this later, coupled with the old
classic poisoned, drug laced, tampered Halloween candy myth that's captivated

(03:34:19):
American parents for decades, whether it be razor blades, napples,
needles and tutsie rules, meth in, gummy bears, cocaine candy corn,
or th HC sour patch kids. If you've ever watched
any local news during the month of October, clips like
these should sound really familiar. Police in at least two

(03:34:40):
Wisconsin towns are investigating reports of possible Halloween candy tampering
breaking right now at ten concerns about possible tainted candy
in Economy Walk tonight. Police tell us they've received reports
of a suspicious person handing out tutsie rolls on Oakwood Avenue.
Right now, police have no evidence that any candy has
definitely been tampered with, the world's leading researcher on Halloween

(03:35:04):
candy tampering, Joel Best, professor of sociology and criminal justice
at the University of Delaware, has found little evidence to
substantiate Halloween candy fears Joel Best has published multiple studies
analyzing the legitimacy of Halloween candy tampering, including his research
paper The Razor Blade in the Apple, The Social Construction

(03:35:24):
of Urban Legends, and his sociology book Threatened Children, Rhetoric
and Concern around Child Victims. I have followed press coverage
of Halloween back to ninety eight, so more than sixty years,
and I cannot find any evidence that any child has
ever been killed or seriously injured by a contaminated treat

(03:35:47):
picked up in the course of triggered treaty. So let's
go back to kind of where all this started. The
first report of Halloween treats being tampered with in North
America was in nineteen fifty nine. That's how Leween, a
California dentist named William Sheen, distributed four hundred and fifty
laxative laced candies to children, thirty of whom fell ill.

(03:36:09):
He was later charged with outrage of public decency and
unlawful dispensing of drugs. This is kind of like the
only incident that is that this has ever actually happened
with was back in the late fifties. This is the
only true one of someone like handing out actually laced
candy to tons of kids. Now. To determine whether the

(03:36:31):
current tempered Halloween candy myths hold any weight, Joel Best
examined twenty five years of Halloween coverage from the New
York Times, Los Angeles Times, and Chicago Tribune. In his research,
he found that there's only been one confirmed death from
a poisoned Halloween candy, and it wasn't from a nefarious
stranger who wanted to harm trick or treaters. The fatal

(03:36:55):
incident occurred in nineteen seventy four, after a Texas man
named Ronald Clarke ob Iron poisoned his eight year old
son with a cyanide laced pixie stick shortly after he
took insurance claims out on his children. O'Brien had reportedly
given poisoned pixie sticks to his daughter and three other
neighborhood children, but the candy had not been consumed since then.

(03:37:17):
Joel Best said that in some instances, kids tamper with
their own candy to get attention, or a friend or
a family member played a prank that went awry, or
even a foreign object ended up inside candy during the
manufacturing process. And that's the majority of these types of
claims that you'll see on the local news. Now, Halloween
can be a particularly dangerous holiday, but not due to

(03:37:40):
tampered candy. The real notable danger comes from pedestrian deaths.
I studied published last year in Gamma Pediatrics, analyzed data
over a forty two year period in the United States
and found a forty three percent higher risk of pedestrian
deaths on Halloween night when compared to the week before
and after. John Staple, lead author and clinical assistant professor

(03:38:02):
of medicine and a scientist at University of British Columbia,
said that quote, we found that particularly among kids age
four to eight, the risk was tenfold higher on Halloween.
So yeah, Halloween actually is pretty dangerous, but it's from
a car, not from someone sneaking drugs into your kids candy.
Last year, before the current Rainbow Centinel scare, the drug

(03:38:27):
laced trick in your kids treat was weed laced candy
and snacks, causing quote unquote THHC overdose among children. But
shady marijuana push yours package them just for kids, and
if stony patch kids are mixed in, it's hard to tell.
And Unfortunately, the black market is making it easy for

(03:38:48):
children to get these products. Ben Salem police confiscated what
looks like normal candy during a traffic stop earlier this month.
But these Sweethearts, they're medicated. These sour patch candies have
a twist, and these Cheetos are anything but all of
these items are laced with th HC. By laced with
th HC, they mean the forty dollar Stoner Patch dummies

(03:39:11):
are a manufactured weed candy sold in legal weed shops
across the country. The fact that these novel t THC
products are incredibly expensive and in packaging covered in we
leaves doesn't seem to matter. Um, But yes, I'm sure
the black market is super eager to give away tiny
fifty dollar bags of weeded rito's. Two children dressed as

(03:39:33):
the Avengers all right, now the details on a big
warning for parents. Tonight police officers and Ben Salem confiscated
these items during the traffic stop. It's candy laced with marijuana,
and now police don't want these friendly looking snacks to
get into the wrong hands. With Halloween coming up. I'm
going to quote from Filter mag quote. Attorneys general across

(03:39:55):
the country are participating in the annual tradition of urging
parents to stand vigilant like free drugs disguised as candy.
On October four, state a g s issued such claims,
all using the same data and language which appears to
have been generously pre written for them by the Department
of Homeland Security Ohio, Illinois, Connecticut, and in New York

(03:40:17):
and Arkansas. Earlier that month decried the dangers of youth
THHC overdose, but without hinting at what those dangers might be,
except for New York Attorney General Letitia James, who alone
of the ages swung big, saying New York parents should

(03:40:37):
be on the alert for deceptive cannabis products that look
like standard snacks and candy but contain dangerously high concentrations
of th HC. These products are especially dangerous for our children.
We've seen an increase in accidental overdoses among children and nationwide,
and it's vital that we do everything we can to
protect our children and curb this crisis and prevent any

(03:41:01):
future harm or even worse death. Now that's a stunning claim,
even by weed disinformation standards. To date, there's been no
confirmed evidence that THHC overdose has ever killed anybody adult
or child. So with all of that drug laced Halloween history,

(03:41:23):
onto the latest rainbow colored menace in your child's tricker
retreat basket. That's Halloween approaches. Federal authorities are warning parents
about the deadly consequences of fitnel pills, particularly about the
rainbow variety that look like candy. The Drug Enforcement Agency
first put out a statement on multicolored quote unquote rainbow

(03:41:46):
fentanel near the end of August two, claiming during that
month that the d e A and law enforcement partners
seized brightly colored fentanel and fentanel pills in states. And
this is how the presence of colored fentanyl was framed
in the d e AS initial statement. Quote this trend

(03:42:07):
appears to be a new method used by Mexican drug
cartels to sell highly addictive and potentially deadly ventanyl made
to look like candy to children unquote. Now, obviously, children
aren't the biggest consumer base for these drugs, since they
have no money, have very low tolerance, and are unlikely

(03:42:28):
to be a repeat customer. But that hasn't stopped the
d e A from continuously referring to these colored pills
as quote unquote marketing to attract kids, as if there's
rainbow fentanyl ads on Nickelodeon or something. It seems the
only one marketing rainbow fentanyl is the d e A
itself and now news channels across the country. This is

(03:42:53):
from Good Morning America. Warning certainly one here that parents
need to hear with Halloween coming up. It's about potential
deadly fentyl pills that look like candy. Obviously, the d
e A is an enforcement agency, not a harm reduction agency,
and the way they've been talking about fentanyl the past
few months has focused more on old War on Drugs

(03:43:16):
style propaganda, with anti immigrant drug warriors pushing the fentanyl
for kids and narrative. The d e AS messaging seems
largely targeted to parents and more intended to cause panic
than actually work to prevent overdoses, and it distracts from
experts that say drug criminalization is what actually increases overdoses,

(03:43:37):
not these quote unquote candy colored pills. Mariah Francis, a
resource associate with the National Harm Reduction Coalition, says such
rhetoric is quote an active byproduct of drug policies that
prioritize criminalization and political agendas over active harm reduction unquote,

(03:43:57):
as colored fentyl can actually serve as an indicator that
these pills are not prescription drugs. The other war on
drugs style scare tactic being used a lot recently has
been promoting heavily publicized drug seizures and making highly exaggerated
claims about what the busts mean to the illicit drug

(03:44:17):
supply and public health. Michigan and Ohio, we seized approximately
four million deadly doses. Special Agent in charge Orville Green
says nationwide that number jumps to thirty six million deadly
doses seized and just four months in there in pill
and powder form, the source materials coming from China produced

(03:44:38):
by drug cartels in Mexico, calling them quote unquote deadly doses,
Like yeah, dude, if you quantify your seizure by an
amount that could be potentially deadly, I suppose you could
only measure in deadly quantities. I could do the same
thing with with caffeine. I can go to the store
and pick up like ten banging g drinks and be

(03:45:01):
I just got a deadly dose of cafe. Like yeah,
that's if you're measuring it in that way, Sure you
can measure it as deadly doses. Plus in that clip
from Fox to Detroit, you can see the anti China,
anti Mexico angle that they're running with now. Obviously, places
like Fox News has been eating the stuff up. Just

(03:45:21):
during the first half of September. The network mentioned rainbow
fentannel at least sixty six times on the air over
the previous month, weaponizing the narrative to blame migrants at
the border and China for the supposed threat that the
drug poses to poor, innocent children. And many of people's
most trusted news sources, which are local news outlets, have

(03:45:43):
contributed to the d E a s panic by parroting
the agency's statements as pure fact, pushing the claim that
rainbow fentanyl is meant to attract kids just at face value,
presented without any skepticism, without any fact checking or information
from independent drug policy experts. Here is a headline from
ABC twenty four in Tennessee quote rainbow fentanyl the colorful

(03:46:07):
marketing tactic already in Memphis streets and this is from
a TV channel and Raleigh, North Carolina DA warns of
so called rainbow fentanyl putting children at risk, and headlines
like that have been a diame a dozen the past month,
never once bringing up that there's not a single piece
of evidence that these pills are being peddled on the playground.

(03:46:29):
This is exactly the kind of behavior from news organizations
that leads to misinformation and panics, which distract from actual
public health dangers and relatively simple things we can do
to combat them. Fox News, many local news stations, and
the d e A itself has now joined in the
long standing annual tradition of Halloween candy based fearmongering by

(03:46:53):
baselessly claiming that parents should be concerned about fentanyl appearing
in their child Halloween candy. Federal agents with an urgent
warning to parents about potentially deadly sentinel pills that look
just like candy. Dubbed rainbow fentanyl, authorities are calling it
a newly packaged poison as Halloween is around the corner.

(03:47:15):
The idea that people are going to give away free
drugs for Halloween, which just get wild concept. Um I
wish I would, I would go trick or treating more
if there was free drugs. But this idea has been
boosted by elected leaders and non d e A government officials.

(03:47:35):
Florida's Attorney General, Ashley Moody, did a whole press conference
saying quote Halloween can be very scary, but nowhere near
as scary as rainbow colored fentanyl that looks like candy
and can be lethal in minute doses. Whether these drugs
are being transported in candy boxes or mixed in with

(03:47:55):
other common drugs and sold on suspecting users, the threat
POE to the safety of kids and young adults is
very real. Just one pill laced with fentinel can kill,
so parents, please talk to your children about the dangers
posed by this extremely lethal drug. Halloween could be scary,
but that isn't anyway. Senator Rob Portman wrote quote, we

(03:48:18):
must have all the boots on the ground to interdict
deadly rainbow fentanyl as Halloween approaches, which he posted alongside
a Fox News story about Fentinel disguised in candy packaging,
which is simply a common tactic to smuggle drugs through borders,
which is why such packaging is found so often in

(03:48:39):
drug seizures. Now, nobody is planning to give away free
skittle fentanyl. Too, Little Timmy when he comes knocking on
doors and more quote unquote boots on the ground is
exactly what law enforcement wanted when they started this lie.
The d e A budget has gone up every year,
and so have Fentinel over doses. But it's the won't

(03:49:02):
somebody think of the children angle that's so irresistible to
news media. It provides a huge rush to our cultures
actual favorite drug, fear for our children. It's the same
undercurrent that fuels attacks on drag queens and trans people.
Fear for the kids. While a long piece and CNN
explicitly said parents of young children should not overly panic,

(03:49:25):
h w R A l piece cautioned that quote, we
all know how easy it is for children to pass
candy around to each other, as if like rainbow Fentanel
is going to be shared around like Eminem's at a
lunch breaker or something like And one of the more
silly things that I found. People running the account for
ABC seven Eyewitness News hid over one hundred replies pointing

(03:49:50):
out the disinformation in their so called eyewitness news story.
In their tweet that read quote hashtag breaking twelve thousand
Fentinel pills seized in wrappers of Skittles whoppers, sweet tarts
at l a X, sparking renewed Halloween warnings to parents.

(03:50:13):
So yeah, they hid over one hundred applies to that
tweet basically saying this is this is bullshit. You have
no idea what you're talking about. This this story again,
it conflates methods of drug trafficking with a longstanding myth
of expensive drugs being hidden in cheap Halloween candy. And then,
by far the most ridiculous thing that I found. It's
just because it's kind of absurd and slightly funny. Laura

(03:50:36):
Trump on Fox News did the most ridiculous Rainbow Fentinel
segment that I could find, including spreading the blatant lie
that police officers have indeed died by simply touching fentanyl. Yeah,
you look at the police officers who when they just
pat people down and they find it, if it touches
their fingers, they literally go into shock and almost die
from it. Something I think have died from it. The

(03:50:58):
idea that you could have a kid anywhere in America
if if one child dies from this on Halloween. I
gotta tell you, we have to take action to stop
this right now because parents are terrified and we have
no answers, what are we supposed to do? They're gonna
go trick or truth? So Democrats ruin Halloween to can
they really do? So. What you wouldn't know by watching

(03:51:19):
these types of news programs, whether they be Fox News
or just regular cable news, is that the colors in
these drugs have been added to pills for years. The
real danger isn't that kids are being given fentanyl like candy.
It's that fentanyl is being pressed into the shapes of
other prescription drugs like oxy codone, and people will take

(03:51:42):
a fentanyl pill thinking it's something else and then overdose.
And throughout many of these news stories, they don't mention narcan,
or if they do, they mentioned in the context as saying,
like this school in l A Now carries narcan. That's
how bad things are getting. They use the presence of
an arcan as like a bad omen which mean no,

(03:52:04):
people should just have narcan everywhere cause it's great. More
on that later. But these colored pills provide such a
compelling visual for anyone with a financial stake in continuing prohibition.
In a way, the d A is right. Rainbow fentanyl
is a marketing stunt, but one concocted by the d
e A itself as a justification for its own existence,

(03:52:26):
rather than drug sellers marketing their product to kids, using
the escalating demonization of fentanyl to call for increased funding
to law enforcement and border patrol, and the need to
convince a public acclimating to the idea of fentanyl that actually,
fentanyl is even scarier than what they once thought. Quoting

(03:52:47):
filter Meg again quote, people sell drugs because they are
economically motivated to do so. No one except the d
e A and its allies is arguing that it's a
good business strategy to kill off your adult buyers and
give free samples to children previously untapped customer base because
the fentanyl wasn't never pretty enough, and not because children

(03:53:08):
do not have money. The emergence of different colors that
pressed pills alongside the traditional blue fentinel pills won't lure
in younger buyers. If anything, it will help keep newer
buyers safe. Unquote, Brightly colored fake pills that are clearly
fake are helpful for people being cut off of their
prescription and turning to street drugs to remind them that

(03:53:29):
what they're getting is not the oxy codon that they're
used to, but something more podent, and for more on
what fentinel actually is and to kind of get an
expert opinion on these topics, I interviewed Ryan Marino, uh,
the resident fentanyl expert who's sited and basically all of
these news stories. So after the s ad break you

(03:53:51):
will hear that interview. First, can you introduce yourself? So
I'm Ryan Marino. I'm a medical toxicologist, emergency doc and
addiction medicine specialists. So what exactly is fentanyl? What, what's
the deal? What's what? What is what is the actual thing?

(03:54:13):
Because people I know have heard a lot about it,
but they may may be unaware, like what this type
of opioid is, how it's different from other things, why
it's around. Yeah, and I think most people here kind
of one side of fentanyl. And so fentanyl is a
synthetic opioid, So it's a lot like harro and morphine,
oxycoda and all those other things. It acts the same way.

(03:54:36):
The difference is that it is more potent and because
it is fully synthetic, it can be made without the
necessity for like large poppy fields whether all that stuff. Um,
but it's it's very easy to produce. It's used medically
all the time. UM, it's like one of the most
ubiquitously used medicines and very invaluable lot for its medical uses,

(03:54:57):
but in the street because of a potency small amounts
to make a huge difference in the dose that people get,
and so fentanyl in street drugs has been the main
driver behind what people call our opioid overdose epidemic UM
and the kind of record breaking overdose deaths that we've
had in recent years. I would like guess that one
of the biggest reasons that people have heard about fentanyl

(03:55:20):
is due to police officers and all of the stories
from the past year of police officers spontaneously overdosing by
either touching it, getting too close to it, breathing the
same air that it's around. Can you overdose by touching fentanyl?
You cannot, UM, So there is a hatch that's made

(03:55:44):
for the medical fentyl, so it can absorb through your
skin if you try really, really hard, but it's incredibly ineffective.
Even with the best pharmaceutical technology that money could buy. UM,
this is still very slow, very ineffective. Touching fentyl cannot
cause an over dose and the way it exists on
the street particularly, you're never going to encounter the form

(03:56:06):
or quantity that you would need to cause an overdose.
So these stories are nothing more than urban legends and misinformation.
How why are people having these effects? Then? Right? Because
there's videos of people like fainting and falling over and
they're like this police officer needed to receive narcan and
was rushed to the hospital. Like what what? What's actually

(03:56:27):
happening there? Because people obviously look like they're experiencing something,
but it doesn't really match up with what fentinel is
able to do. So it's a really interesting phenomenon. And
if you look at any of these stories, any of
these videos, you can very clearly see people having real symptoms.
I'm not trying to cast any doubt on that, but
what's reported and what's shown is actually the opposite of

(03:56:49):
what fentyl would do, And so people report feeling very anxious,
breathing very rapidly, having their heart race, all of the
things that fentyl would actually cause the opposite. And so
I can only speculate on what's really happening there, but
my guests would be that this is some sort of
panic reaction related to the fact that people are hearing
about this every day, hearing the vannel is killing hundreds

(03:57:11):
of thousands of people, hearing that other people have just
dropped down from being near it. UM. And there's also
this related concept called the no cebo effect, which is
kind of like the dark side of the placebo effect,
if you will, UM. And so basically it's just that
if you believe something so strongly, you can have very
negative of real symptoms from it, and the way you

(03:57:32):
would treat this would be with a placebo, which in
these situations Narkian is a placebo. So the fact that
Narkian works for some of them UM kind of suggests
that there is some sort of placebo no cebo effect
going on. I know that the ventil has become more
common since the pandemics rough you, I would say probably
starting in California is what most of most of it

(03:57:53):
looks like in terms of like the whole like opioid
epidemic thing, like why is this become such a big
problem in the past like three years specifically, like with
fentanyl getting into so much of the supply well, so
fentyl started getting cut into heroin. UM particularly on the
East coast like pretty early on, probably like ten or

(03:58:14):
more years ago now, and took a while to make
its way west. It seemed like California actually had different heroin,
and particularly like black tar, heroin was more prevalent there,
which can't be as easily replaced with a powder for
anyone who's familiar with heroin. UM. But now, I mean,
there is really no like other opioid supply, So things
like heroin are almost impossible to come by just because

(03:58:36):
it doesn't exist in the world. The like oxycodone, oxycont
and all of these pills that people used to sell
on the street also just don't exist because they're not
being prescribed anymore. Some of them aren't even being manufactured anymore. UM.
And so what's left is really when you take away
the supply but you don't address the demand, is something's
got to fill it. And Fentyl is there. Fentyl is

(03:58:56):
really easy to make. Its relatively cheap um and simple
to produce, and so you can press it into pills
that look like oxycodone. You can mix it up into
a powder that looks like heroin and gives people similar effects.
But because it's so much more potent, which it's like
fifty times more potent than heroin. Um So, I mean
if you think just in terms of percentage wise, like

(03:59:18):
a one or two percent difference could be double the
dose when you compare it to something. Um So, that's
where the trouble comes in. And then with the rainbow
fentanyl angle, the DA has been talking about how fentanyl
is this new thing to market two children. They sort
of market a lot of being like this is like

(03:59:40):
some advertising job done by big drug to to sell
to sell two kids. Um Because first off, like why
would these drugs be pressed into different colors, like with
with with with the fentanyl pills being in you know,
the multi colored collect Like what's the actual purpose of that. Well,

(04:00:03):
so that's a great question. And I don't know what
to make of whatever the d e A Is doing
and why they make these announcements because there's there's no
evidence behind it. Um They have provided no evidence and
their own press releases going back years show multiple colors
of ventational pressed pills. Um My best guests and in

(04:00:23):
talking to like people use drugs, people who work in
the same space across the country, is that pharmaceuticals come
in different colors, and so these probably were mostly just
to mimic things like oxycode on tabs. Also, I mean
dealers like to add their own kind of like marked
the things in terms of heroin will come with different
like stamps on the bag, so probably something similar there.

(04:00:46):
But also I mean people just tend to like things
that are are colored more than like a grainy beige
pill um. If it comes with like a pink or
green on, it is going to be more desirable. But
there's no evidence what so ever that this is intentionally
marketed towards children. Children are not good clients for for
drug dealers, and these are just things that adults want.

(04:01:11):
American adults are the ones buying these drugs. I guess
can you speak more on how the d e as
rhetorics around this thing, especially it's been like escalating the
past few months leading up to Halloween, right, there's been
a lot of heavily publicized seizures saying like we seized
enough sentinel to kill five hundred million people or something like.

(04:01:33):
They're like they they frame it in this really like
bombastic way, and then you're there's a lot of stuff
talking about how it's it's being hidden in like candy
boxes and they're going to be giving it out on
Halloween to your kids, And like, what is the d
A doing? Like what what's their incentive for talking about

(04:01:54):
it in this way? And obviously and you I can't
like ask you, like what what is the d A doing? Ryan?
Why are they deal like this? But like from your perspective,
like like this rhetoric doesn't seem very helpful in terms
of actually preventing overdoses. It seems to be kind of
just fear mundering um specifically with stuff like like like
like like with the drugs being hidden inside candy boxes.

(04:02:17):
There's reasons for why people might do that to smuggle them.
But with all of the rhetoric that the DA has
been been pushing, like, is it like actually dangerous the
way that they've been talking about it in terms of
like it's not it's not talking about harm, production, is
not talking about ways to actually help. It's just like
scaring parents, it seems. Yeah. I mean, I think the
d e A is solely a law enforcement agency. There

(04:02:41):
is no one there involved in the treatment of addiction
in terms of like addiction science, chemistry. No one there
who is like a performer drug user even Um. So
their motives are always suspect to me. And I think
with this rainbow fentanel press release they put it out,
there was no evidence behind it, that none of it

(04:03:02):
made any sense. Um. The term rainbow fentanyl wasn't even
searchable before August two when the d A made this announcement,
which is is kind of crazy to think about. Um.
And then within six weeks of that announcement, US Congress
has pledged to give them hundreds of millions more dollars
to quote unquote fight rainbow fentan all, which is again

(04:03:23):
a thing that does not exist. Um. And I mean
looking back, the d e A budget has gone up
year on year hundreds of percent since like the nineteen eighties,
but even within the context of our opioid overdose crisis
has gone up year on year for all of the
past I don't know however many years you want to
look at it. Their department size grows every year, uh,

(04:03:46):
and overdose deaths go up every year. So whatever they're
doing is obviously not working. Um. And like you said,
I mean, they particularly ignore in distract from things like
harm reduction, from real and space measures and kind of
public health investments that we could be making. And when
it comes to hundreds of millions of dollars extra being

(04:04:08):
thrown at the d e A for Rainbow fentannel, and
we think back to, what was it just like last
winter when the current administration set aside I think thirty
million dollars towards harm reduction being the first time the
federal government has put aside dedicated money for harm reduction,
and that created its own kind of like moral panic

(04:04:29):
backlash as well. Um, but thirty million dollars was the
first and only federal investment in harm reduction, and yet
three million dollars can be drummed up at the drop
of a hat for an invented crisis. So it does
really kind of beg the question of, like, what are
we doing here? And why are we continuing to do
things that don't work? What do you wish people knew

(04:04:52):
that would help them maybe combat some of the misinformation
that gets peddled by like lots of like local TV
stations are very quick to cover types of stories, very
quick to cover the stories of like your local cop
just almost died at the school by getting within five
ft of a sentinel vaporizer or something like like what
what do you wish people knew to help like combat

(04:05:15):
this type of stuff. I mean, it seems like common
sense is just not common when it comes to drug topics.
If the police were saying that people were giving out
guns for Halloween, if they were saying that they found
uranium or plutonium in a car and four officers went down,
that would require serious consideration and fact checking before it

(04:05:37):
ever was reported on or accepted. And so I mean,
I think when it comes to this idea that someone
was in a car with a bag of fentinyl and
nobody in the car was affected, but the officers outside
the car all went down, um like just basic kind
of critical thinking or applying any lens of skepticism, I mean,
makes all of these narratives fall apart. So that would

(04:05:59):
be I mean, my biggest ask in people watching these stories.
I feel like the onus of responsibility really should be
on the ones who are reporting it, not to just
necessarily take the words of law enforcement as authority on
every subject, especially when they do not have the background
to be authorities on how things like ventinyl work. Before

(04:06:19):
we close out, I would like to talk a little
bit about narcan um like what it is, what it does,
and where people can get it. So Narcan is amazing.
I cannot say enough positive things about Narcan. I mean,
I'm not like a religious person or anything, but if
miracles were to exist, Narcan is literally a miracle, um

(04:06:42):
and especially if anyone has ever seen it in action.
But so, what it is for people who don't know,
Narcan is the brand name nasal spray of nilock Zone,
which is the antidote or the reversal agent for anyone
experiencing an opioid overdose, including fentyl. And there are no
opioids that Narcan does not work on. It isn't gonna
reverse every situation, certainly, um. But it is a perfect antidote,

(04:07:06):
so to speak, or as close to one as we
have ever had, um And So I mean, if you
are worried about someone experiencing an overdose, it's something that
you can carry or have nearby, and anyone can give it.
It was the nasal spray was actually designed with taxpayer dollars.
Interestingly enough um so that an untrained child could administer it,
and so it's very easy to use. It's very easy

(04:07:28):
to obtain for the most part, nowadays it's available and
I think almost every state without a prescription, you can
just go to your pharmacy and ask for it UM.
If you can't get it from like your local health
department or another harm reduction organization. But I have it
in my car and every work bag I have UM,
I take it with me when I travel. It's something
that people can carry and really makes a big difference.

(04:07:50):
And obviously you don't want to experience or come across
someone having an overdose. But it's much better to have
with you UM if you need it than to be
unprepared and have to kind of deal with the consequences.
And I think this far into this like opioid overdose
crisis that the United States and now most of the

(04:08:11):
world has been experiencing. Most people can probably think of
someone who they know who they've lost to overdose or
or similar situation UM, and you don't want to kind
of be stuck regretting it later. Well, thank you so much. UM.
Where can people find you on the internet? So I'm
mostly just on Twitter at Ryan Marino, just my name

(04:08:34):
on word all right, Well, thank you so much for
coming on to talk to us about the latest scourge
hiding inside your kid's Halloween basket. Thanks so with that,
that does it for us today here at it could
happen here? Um, have fun, tricker treating. Um, if you
have any drugs, good for you. I'm happy you got

(04:08:56):
this for free. Watch out for cars. Uh those are
actually day dress. And thanks thanks to everybody who attended
the recent It could Happen here live stream. Thank you
so much for coming. I hope to get through more questions,
but we went a little long because there were so
many people. But I will I will answer two more
questions here. Did you know that the latest My Little
Pony movie has a literal xenophobobic fascist dictator as an antagonist? No,

(04:09:20):
I did not know that, but it's not surprising based
on what I know about the recent My Little Pony media.
And then, um, what do you think is the most
important thing somebody can have for a disaster or chaos preparedness?
My personal answer to that would probably be friends, friends,
really useful UM books on how to like make stuff

(04:09:40):
and like how to like you know, basically survival books
because you don't want to count on having the Internet.
And then I don't know, like water, water filters, water
purification tablets. Those would be those would be my picks.
But I hope everyone has a happy, happy Halloween and
that doesn't here for it Could Happen Here. Closing out
our Lady just Spooky week. Hey, We'll be back Monday

(04:10:10):
with more episodes every week from now until the heat
death of the Universe. It Could Happen Here is a
production of pool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool
Zone Media, visit our website cool zone media dot com,
or check us out on the I Heart Radio app,
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find sources for It Could Happen Here, updated monthly at
cool zone Media dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.